Staff Testimonies
FFOZ, dedicated to proclaiming the Torah and its way of life, fully centered on Messiah, to today's people of God.
Hope Egan
Hope is an associate editor for messiah magazine and works on special projects. She is also the author of Holy Cow!
I grew up in Skokie, Illinois. At the time, this Chicago suburb was one of the few places outside of Israel that you could be Jewish and still be in the majority.
My earliest memory of religion was when I was in preschool. I would periodically ask my parents, “Are we Christian or Jewish?” They’d remind me that we were Jewish, and they did so with the same (or less) energy as when they’d remind me that we were Cubs fans, not White Sox fans.
I do recall some “Jewish” things from my upbringing: the mezuzah on our doorpost, the periodic Passover seder, the High Holiday services. Although I attended religious and Hebrew school until I was 13 (my bat mitzvah), I never thought about these observances. After all, many of my friends did the same things; it was all I ever knew.
During Sunday school, where I learned about biblical holidays and God’s ancient interaction with humanity, my biggest question never got answered: “And then what happened…?” On some level I believed that God created the world, that He delivered my ancestors from Egyptian slavery, and that He even parted the Red Sea. But since I never heard about His current-day presence, I assumed that after His work was done, He just sat back in His big “easy chair in the sky” to watch His creation play out.
Fast-forward to adulthood.
My life looked great on the outside, but my insides were crumbling. My serially monogamous relationships never lasted more than a few months. I dreaded going to my dream job as a CPA. And I was obsessed with food and eating—and with exercise, in order to keep up the façade. My wake-up call happened on Thanksgiving Day in 1992. A horrible car crash (where I came within inches of dying) meant that I couldn’t exercise. My out-of-control eating habits, combined with the inability to work out, put me on the fast track to gaining a LOT of weight. After reluctantly admitting I had a problem, I ended up in a 12-step group for overeaters (OA). It was there that I first learned that God was still alive and well and working in people’s lives. There I also learned that my dysfunctions went far beyond food.
One night, after a telephone conversation where I was unnecessarily cruel to my mother, I ended up tumbling to my knees, sobbing. I felt so wretched; I begged God to help me. Up until that moment, I had a lot of resistance to Him; at OA I was skeptical…didn’t He have anything better to do than keep me from eating another Matt’s chocolate chip cookie? But this incident with my mother showed me how dark my insides were. I was desperate, so I cried out to Him.
At that point I still hadn’t heard the “official” gospel, but I knew I was lost and that my own attempts at trying to fix myself were impossible. I needed something supernatural to change my heart and turn my life around. By God’s grace, He seemed to answer my prayers, even though I did not yet know His name.
Around this time, I began to wonder about Jesus. After reading some new-age books about Him, I thought that maybe Jesus wasn’t such a bad guy after all. Once I crossed that line, I became curious whether He was indeed the promised Messiah. The accountant in me knew that the numbers were in His favor (the Christian population dwarfed the Jewish), so my conclusion was practically drawn before my investigation began.
I was introduced to—and accepted—the gospel message shortly after I began attending an unconventional Christian Bible study in 1996. The notion that I was a sinner was something God made clear to me four years earlier. When presented with the notion that Jesus was the agent for reconciliation with God, and the Holy Spirit as the agent of transformation, it was easy to accept. For a while.
Within two years of being part of this small faith community, I longed for a bigger community and a church with deeper roots. I wanted to grow closer to Jesus and His earliest followers, so I naturally gravitated to…Catholicism. Since Catholics could trace their spiritual roots back nearly 2,000 years, versus only 500 or so for Protestants, I was hooked. Warmly welcomed by the community, I truly deepened my relationship with Jesus in new ways and felt peace. For a while.
Tension and doubts surfaced again. Not only was I concerned about disappointing my family (by becoming a Catholic believer), but now I was also concerned about my Christian friends whose perceptions of the Catholic church were quite different than mine. For me, being Jewish and crossing the line to follow Jesus was so monumental that everything else was just fine-tuning. In spite of the tension, I embarked on the year-long road to being baptized and confirmed in the Catholic church.
Another wrench surfaced during this time. A highly respected priest in the Jewish-Catholic relations movement urged me to investigate my Jewish Roots before taking the plunge, so-to-speak. He also emphasized that I couldn’t “do both.” I should either “convert” to Christianity or take on Judaism. He said that people who try to do both usually get tossed around for lack of roots and community. Hmmm. I took his counsel and investigated my Jewish roots.
I was not interested in checking out Reform or Conservative Judaism, since I thought I knew about these from childhood. At this point in my faith journey, I was looking for a brand of Judaism where people believed in God and eagerly looked to Him in all areas of life.
I was acquainted with some Jewish women whose secular upbringings were similar to mine. They had traveled to Israel, had deep, spiritual experiences, and became very observant. I became friends with them and discovered a hidden community, just a few miles from where I grew up. These serious, observant, Orthodox Jewish women and their families were amazing. Spiritual and scriptural and faith-filled, it seemed like they focused on God from the moment they woke up in the morning, until their heads hit their pillows at night. They lived in geographic proximity to one another, sharing life as well as faith with one another. This is exactly what I was looking for! Almost.
In order to become part of their community, I would have to break up with Brian (my then almost-but-not-quite fiancé, who was not Jewish), accept a yoke that seemed a bit too burdensome for me (separating my dishes, wearing a wig, etc.), and walk away from Jesus, none of which I was willing to do.
I was baptized and confirmed at St. Clement Church in April, 2000. After two years of attending Catholic church, I could now fully participate in mass and take communion. I had finally found a home. For a while.
Within a month of my baptism, Brian (who by then was my husband) announced that he couldn’t take any more. He had joined me on my journey in the Catholic church, but having been raised in a less-than-optimal Catholic church, and being well-versed in the errant aspects of Catholicism, he needed a change, so we started attending a non-denominational evangelical church.
Within six months, I met a nice Jewish girl who was on fire for Jesus—and for the land, the people and the Scriptures of Israel. Brian and I joined her and her husband in taking FFOZ’s HaYesod discipleship course, and the rest is history!
Hope and Brian Egan live in Chicago with their son, Daniel. To read the story of Hope’s journey to Torah, read the Prologue to Holy Cow! here. http://www.holycownews.com/web/prologue.shtml
