Curriculum Vitae

My life took a major turn in the summer of 1980, starting with a serious, long “midlife crisis”. I was the administrative director of a deaconess’ hospital at the time. Due to major disagreements within the governing body about the hospital’s future direction, I was plunged into inner turmoil from which I sought a way out. On my sister’s recommendation I took part in a one-week retreat at St. John’s Convent in Reichenschwand. Through self-awareness exercises the participants were confronted with their inner situation. I saw myself in a completely new light and realized that I was full of unimagined possibilities. A lot of positive feedback from other students made me feel like the center of the group. I increasingly had daydreams I couldn’t make head or tail of, which kept me awake at night. After a week of insomnia, I felt ready for a psychiatric institution. Psychotic episodes soon robbed made me of the power over my emotions. Shortly before entering the clinic I had a very memorable experience. Seeking refuge in my own devotional corner, my mind kept wandering faster and faster between a symbolic snake and a symbolic cross. These wanderings kept on accelerating rapidly until I fell, frozen to the ground. At that moment I heard the “Big Bang”, followed immediately by the wails of a newborn baby. Looking back, that was my spiritual rebirth almost exactly 27 years ago. The head sisters of St. John’s Convent, alarmed at my condition, invited me to recuperate in their community after my three-week stay in the psychiatric clinic. At a charismatic service the following promise revealed itself to me: “If you trust in Me and put your hand in Mine and let Me be your guide, you shall cross the border into a new land with Me, which you have never known before and whose wonders are so great that even the most beautiful thing you can imagine is only a shadow in compare. But beware that you do not stand still when I want to go further with you!”.
I have carried this promise with me ever since, and it still has an important meaning for my life.

When I traveled to Israel for the first time in 1994, I had spiritual and physical experiences the like of which I had never felt before or since. Without going into too much detail, I realized that this was the promised crossing of the border. But all this was not clear enough or fast enough to me. Driven by my inner urgings I had an epiphany: “Do not despise the time of small beginnings!” Although this was really an admonition, this epiphany touched me in a positive way, because it confirmed that I was on the right path. In the years that followed up to 1998, I was in Israel three more times, hoping for more experiences of the kind I have mentioned. Nothing of the sort materialized, and I simply let it rest. When I discovered an advertisement for the apartment “Beit Yona” on a website in 2003, I was full of excitement. Here I must add that, at the end of our course in Reichenschwand, the self-awareness group had to draw a group picture without a given theme on a blackboard. We drew a huge whale and it was clear – albeit unspoken – that I was Jonah from the story in the Bible. At the time, I didn’t know what to make of this. It was only later, with the help of a pastor, that it became clear to me. Although I was dismissed from my managerial post after another hospital stay, it was I who fled from my vocation. When I saw the advertisement for Beit Yona I thought it might have something to do with the Jonah story. As we all know, Jonah was given a second chance. I did not want to miss this one. I rented the apartment for three weeks in April 2004. This stay became a personal retreat in which many dreams came to me. One of them, a prophecy in Hebrew, I found particularly rousing: “Mi misrachi Ya yishlah” (Yahweh will send from an Oriental). Who this Oriental was and what he would send remained open. I was also promised in a dream that I would be offered a bank traineeship in Jerusalem.

In the fall of 2004, I attended the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, organized by the Christian Embassy. One of the speakers was Brother Yun from China, who had been severely persecuted for his faith and was granted asylum in Germany. His memoirs, which I later read in the book “The Heavenly Man”, impressed me deeply. I realized that Brother Yun was the promised misrachi, and I sought a way to contact him. In early May 2005 he was on a lecture tour and I attended three events and shared my dream and impressions with Brother Yun. After praying about it, he came to the conclusion that I had a lifelong mission to atone for what the Christians did to the Jews. This mission was lifelong, he stressed.  He laid his hands on me and blessed me for this service.

In the fall of 2006, at the end of a three-month language course in Jerusalem, an Orthodox Jew with curls at his temples suddenly addressed me in a commanding tone: “You must become a Jew!” When I asked him full of amazement “Why? I am a Christian!” he replied: “For that very reason. Jesus was a Jew.” There was nothing I could say against this. In retrospect, this Orthodox Jew, although smoking a cigarette, appeared to me like an angel of God and preoccupied me intensely. Two events came to my mind that I had experienced in April 2005, also in Jerusalem. One event was a fan heater in the shower, which I could not start up on the Sabbath despite my best efforts. But the very next day, the machine was running again without any problems. The second event concerned a dinner. I had invited a visitor and prepared meat with a cream sauce. The following night I developed stomach pains that were so severe I had to seek a pharmacy and get medicine. I thought the meat had been rotten, but I later learned that my visitor had not had any complaints like mine. The whole thing felt like a divine invitation to become Jewish.

Now I took the matter into my own hands. On February 21, 2007, I wrote to the rabbi of the Jewish community, shared my impressions with him and told him about my life since 1980, asking him for a consultation to learn about the possibilities and conditions for converting to Judaism. Having received no answer by May 23, 2007, I tried to call the rabbi. As he did not pick up the phone, I spoke on his answering machine and asked him to reply. I decided to call again after a month if I still hadn’t heard from him by then. At the same time, if his reply were negative, I resolved to undertake to convert to Judaism in Jerusalem. I was thinking of making a phone call on June 25, 2007.