Tibie Wechsler: A Story for Your Sukkah
by Daniel Lancaster
Tibie Wechsler has turned eighty years old. Last Sunday my family went to her birthday celebration, sponsored by the messianic congregation Seed of Abraham of St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Tibie has been a star-student in my weekly Torah studies for several years and has often served as a Torah Club small group leader in her home. She is a stalwart promoter of First Fruits of Zion. In honor of her eightieth birthday and the festival of Sukkot, I want to tell you a little bit of her story.
Tibie was born into a Jewish home in 1927. Though her father was mostly secular, Tibie’s mother had been raised in an orthodox home, the daughter of a prestigious rabbi and philanthropist from Vilna. Though Tibie’s parents were largely non-observant, her mother transmitted a spirit of faith and strong Jewish identity to Tibie.
When Tibie was sixteen, her boyfriend was going overseas to serve in the military. Tibie wanted to give him a unique gift before he left, and on a whim, she purchased a Bible for him. She did not realize that it was a Christian published King James Version of the Bible. She wrote inside the front cover, “This is for eternity.” She hoped that the possession of a holy book would help keep him safe.
He did return safely, and they had an orthodox wedding in 1948. A decade later, when Tibie was raising her first child, she got involved with a women’s group dedicated to learning about raising children in a godly manner and becoming godly wives. Tibie was vaguely aware that the women were Christians, but she was deeply impressed with these delightful women who did not gossip and took life so seriously. On one occasion they asked her, “What makes you Jewish?” She did not know how to answer. It was not a question that had ever occurred to her. She said, “I don’t know. But I will find the answer and let you know. But tell me, is my participation in this group jeopardized by being Jewish?” They assured her that she was welcome. They were simply intrigued because they did not know any other Jewish people.
Tibie decided to find out what it really meant to be Jewish, and she knew that the only place to find that out was in the Bible. She decided to go to the library to get a Bible, but that night, as she was putting away laundry, she found a book in her husband’s dresser drawer. It was the Bible she had given him. She had completely forgotten about the gift, and even then, did not remember that she was the one who had given it to him.
She decided to begin reading, and she read for an hour that night. Then she wrote down the page number she was on and put it back in her husband’s drawer. So began a three year process of secretly reading the Bible at night and then placing it back in the drawer where she found it. To her surprise, she discovered a little section in the back of the book called the New Testament.
“My mother had warned me that if I ever got involved with Christians it would kill me,” Tibie recalls. Nevertheless, her curiosity got the best of her. She said to herself, “I am a literate person. I will read this and find out why Christians persecute Jews.” She never did find out why Christians persecute Jews. Instead, she found a story about “a Jewish guy named Jesus who had a bunch of Jewish guys who followed him around.” Tybie says, “More than that, it was the greatest love story ever told.”
Tibie was confused. “How can everyone be so wrong about Jesus? How can it be that all the Jewish people and all the rabbis could be so wrong about this man? What’s wrong with me that I can see the truth, that he probably is the Messiah and no one else does?”
Tibie continued to read and study the Bible. At the time, her husband was working nights. Tibie was pregnant with her second child. One night Tibie could not sleep. She was tormented by the things she was reading. She felt that she wanted to believe. “How could I have come to this conclusion?” she asked herself.
In her grandfather’s home in Vilna, the very learned rabbis used to assemble to discuss Torah with her grandfather. In those days, the writings of Rabbi Isaac Lichtenstein were circulating and creating a great stir. At the time, there was a poor Jewish family living in Vilna who had become believers. The community drove them out, but Tibie’s grandfather was ashamed at how the believing family had been mistreated. Several of the men of the community gathered in his home to discuss the matter. “Could this be true? Could it be true?” they asked. Tibie’s mother had observed all of this, and years later, she warned her daughter about what had happened to the believing family.
Tibie lay awake crying and praying. She knew what would happen if she became a believer. Her husband would leave her. Jewish law would give him the right to take the children. She would be cut off from her relatives and family. Yet her heart longed for this Messiah.
At last she sat up in her bed and said aloud, “If you are who you say you are, and did all these miracles I have read about, then you can come right here into my room and show yourself to me.” Immediately the room seemed to cloud over with a smoke-like haze, and suddenly she felt that she was no longer in her room. In the midst of the haze she discerned the shadow of a man who said to her, “Daughter. I am who you think I am. You can believe on me. I am the Messiah of Israel.”
She replied, “If I accept you, I must confess you, because I love you! But please do not separate me from my family.” The vision faded, and she was alone in her room, still praying, crying, and loving the Messiah at quarter to eight in the morning. Just then she heard the car drive up and her husband enter the house. Ordinarily, she would have been up, out of bed with her hair brushed and her face washed, but this morning she was disheveled and still in her bed clothes when her husband came in. As soon as he saw her he exclaimed, “Woe! What happened to you?”
Aware that she must look frightful, but terribly afraid of telling her husband the truth, she quickly apologized saying, “Nothing. It’s nothing at all.”
But he continued, saying, “You are just aglow! I have never seen you look so beautiful!”
Encouraged, she said, “Please sit down on the couch with me. I have something to tell you. I believe Jesus is the Messiah.”
He reached out for her, and she flinched, imagining that perhaps he might slap her for speaking the unspeakable. Instead he embraced her and asked, “What took you so long?” For the last three years, he had been well aware that his wife was secretly reading his Bible, and he had purposely left it there for her to find. He himself had been a secret believer ever since he had first read the Bible his sixteen-year-old sweetheart had given him so long ago. He had read it while stationed with the military in Greece. “He read it, believed it, and that was it,” Tibie explains. Afraid of losing her, he had kept the matter quiet, but he was already a believer before they had married.
Tibie is eighty years old. She was widowed long ago, but her romance with the Messiah of Israel continues to this day.
copyright 2007, first fruits of zion
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