Irving Salzman's father had survived the Holocaust, and was committed to raising "good Jewish boys." So Irving went to synagogue, attended Hebrew school, and was observant to kashrut (the "kosher" dietary laws) and went to a Lubavitch Yeshiva. He became very active in synagogue life, apprenticing with the local cantor and learned how to be a Torah reader, a position he held for fifteen years.

To meet new friends, Irving was on a chat line one evening, and talking with a born-again Believer. The two told each other about their respective faiths. Every week, this young man would share with Irving the Messianic prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures.

Irving took all of this with a grain of salt as he trusted the wisdom of the rabbinical interpretations of these prophecies over this born-again Christian's understanding.
He thought to himself, "Who is this Gentile Christian and what does he know about the Messianic Jewish prophecies?" Irving later found out that his friend spent hours and hours in the Jewish public library researching all the questions that came up in their weekly conversations.

For an entire year the two debated on the phone, but Irving's trust was solidly in the rabbinical authority. "Can I read to you from the New Testament?" Irving's young friend asked one day. Irving agreed, as he had never heard a word of the New Testament. He was then treated to the entire Sermon on the Mount, when Yeshua (Jesus) spoke the life of faith to the multitudes. "I had not seen anything like this in the rabbinic writing of my youth.

I was overwhelmed by the authority, wisdom, and compassion of Yeshua in the Sermon on the Mount," said Irving. "Could we have all been wrong?" This was a hard pill to swallow. It would mean that the Jewish people had seen their Messiah and denied Him and for 2,000 years we have all been telling our people a lie [that Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah]. And so Irving began his own study of the Messianic prophecies.

"I vowed I would not allow the rabbinic interpretations to influence, but let the text show me who He was. After a couple of months I knew that Jesus of Nazareth was the only candidate who fulfilled the prophecies. It was a matter of fact, so I accepted Him as my Savior." Irving Salzman is now a Messianic Rabbi in New Jersey. He has been an outreach worker with Chosen People Ministries, reaching hundreds, maybe thousands of people with the truth of Yeshua, giving them the opportunity - much like he had - to find their Savior.