By Teodor and Felissa Todorov
"I was born in Bulgaria in a non-religious family." : says Felissa McDonald
The general culture in Bulgaria is a ch'ristian-orthodox one, but after 50 years of communism and atheism most people are not very observant, and especially most young people look at organized religions very skeptically. In my family all kinds of religious concepts and rituals were treated as something strange or even crazy and were mostly made fun of.
From a young age I felt a yearning for spiritual significance and connection with the Director of the World. Probably every person has such feelings instinctively, since we are all children of the same G-d. But I did not know how to build such a connection, nor how to apply any religious concepts in my everyday life.
When I was about 18 years old, I moved to Germany in order to study at the University. Being far away from home, I felt the courage and deep essential need to start my spiritual journey. I decided then to start looking for G-d in the Bible and for a way to connect to Him.
After I had read the Bible for the first time, I slowly began to change myself. I separated from my environment and friends, from an empty fragmented life and started living in seclusion for several years. I started gathering all information I could about the different religions around the world. My logic was, that since G-d allowed that so many religions exist in the world, none of them could be alone the right one, but there should be a spark of truth in each one of them. Of course, now I know this logic to be false and dangerous.
After 4 years of intensive spiritual searching, G.d had mercy on me and one day i decided to try to live according to the Jewish teaching, the Torah. Later i found out that the exact day i made this decision happened to be the day of Shavuoth, the day the Jewish people received and accepted the Torah from G-d on Mount Sinai.
After the decision was made, everything happened very fast. I started searching on the internet for Torah-resources. A little bit later I found the website of chabad.org (this happened on another special date Gimmel Tammuz – third day of the Jewish month, during july). It was time to read for the first time the Torah with the commentary of Rashi, suddenly many questions were answered, i was able to understand the meaning of many places in the Bible which had been a mystery for me before. Slowly everything was starting to make sense, I was starting to see a bigger and harmonious picture. I made contact with the local Jewish community and started attending the services in the local Synagogue. The Jews accepted me very friendly and warm, for which I’m very thankful.
At that time I hadn’t yet heard about the 7 Laws of Noah, I din’t know that there was a difference between Jews and Non-Jews, that G-d has prepared different missions and had different expectations from His Jewish and Non-Jewish children.
Then I stumbled upon another website of AskNoah.org and a whole new dimension of knowledge was reveled to me. I started reading the materials there, I started asking questions on the online-forum. Still, about 5 years passed until I personally met a real Rabbi for the first time. Thanks to the modern technologies until then I was able to have contact via internet with observant Jews, devoted to spreading the truth of Torah to the world.
My mentor and teacher is Rabbi Dr. Michael Schulman of Jerusalem, Israel, Director of AskNoah Intl. He guided me through the years, helping me gain more and more knowledge about my mission in life. Later he arranged a meeting with who would became my future wife, Felissa, who was also an observant Noahide at that time, and continues to be.
With the Help of Heaven, we hope to continue the study Torah online, with the Noahide Academy of Israel and Ask Noah Intl. and to maintain an intensive contact with our Noahide friends around the world. Hopefully soon there will be a strong and thriving Noahide community in Germany as well.
It is our mission and obligation to spread out the knowledge of G-d’s Will. As the Lubavitcher Rebbe said it so many times, the spreading of the Noahide Laws is an important and crucial effort on our generation as part of the time we are living in to usher universal peace and happiness… “when there will be no more pain, no more war, no more sickness no more sorrow…” (Rambam in Laws of Kings) and “when we will all call upon the Name of G-d to serve Him in one purpose.” (Zephania 3:9) “On that day G-d will be One and His Name One.” (Zechariah 14:9) .
May it be speedily in our days! Amen! By Teodor Todorov from Germany
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