Biola University professor of Modern Middle Eastern and Islamic History, Judith Rood, spoke to The Messianic Times about her difficult journey to faith in Jesus Christ after feeling the devastating loss of Jewish family members in the Holocaust. Rood, at the time, could not understand why God had abandoned her people.

Rood tells The Messianic Times, the leading international Messianic Jewish newspaper in existence, that she grew up in a conventional Jewish home in Pennsylvania and Maryland. At a young age she became enthralled with studying Hebrew and spent a year during college studying the language in Jerusalem.

After leaving Jerusalem and returning to New College in Sarasota, FL, Rood found some common threads in what she was being taught.

“She discovered most of the books she read on Islamic studies were written by German and Austrian Jews,” according to The Messianic Times, “Who had developed a roundabout empathy toward Arab Muslims, erroneously equating Nazism with Christianity, and Christianity as the opposite of Islam.”

Rood adopted these ideas and became angry with God for the death of her grandparents during the Holocaust and the persecution of her Jewish people.

While working on her doctorate at The University of Chicago, Rood embarked on a scriptural journey to disprove Messianic Judaism. Rather than refuting the ideas, she consequently became a believer after being invited to a Messianic Bible study by classmate Paul Rood. She attended an Easter service conducted by Jhan Moskowitz from Jews for Jesus that triggered a response in her heart and began her conversion.

Rood married Paul, who is also a Biola History professor, in 1983. She taught at William Tyndale College and has now been teaching at Biola for seven years.

Written by Ashley Shafer, Media Relations Intern