How Can We Know That Judaism Is the One True Religion?

He left Israel for the United States after his military service and lived the American dream. There, he converted to Christianity, married a Christian woman, and even became an active missionary. What made him leave everything behind and return to Judaism?
The story of Daniel Assor.

After my discharge from the army, I flew to New York with friends. They were searching for dreams of wealth, while I was on a much bigger search—for truth. I read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, along with books about meditation and yoga.

Over time, however, I lost focus. Life in New York quickly turned into a whirlwind—running between bars in the Village, happenings in Central Park, and museums on the Upper East Side. I sank into a large, warm sea of purposeless existence.

I spent time with other Israelis who wanted to disconnect, and we opened a business marketing fashion accessories. Within a short time, I made a lot of money, earned a pilot’s license, and bought myself an airplane.

I wanted to become a flight instructor, so I moved to Florida to earn a degree in aviation. On campus, there were Christian students who studied the Bible together. I was curious and signed up for a comparative religion course taught by a local priest. He began with Eastern religions and reached Judaism toward the end of the course. He claimed that Abraham worshipped mountain idols he called “El Shaddai.”

Shocked, I raised my hand. “Do you know that the name ‘Shaddai’ appears on the mezuzah at the entrance of every Jewish home? Are you claiming that modern Jews also worship ‘mountain idols’?”

The priest stood silently as the room fell quiet. Suddenly, a long-haired Catholic student stood up. Feeling compelled to defend her faith, she angrily pointed at me and shouted, “You! We didn’t come here to listen to you! Get out!”

Before she finished speaking, she suddenly began choking and collapsed to the floor, clutching her throat. I sat there stunned, barely daring to breathe. Several students rushed to help her, brought her water, and after some time she recovered. The rest of the class just stared at me. The atmosphere was tense. We took a break, and afterward the priest asked me not to return to the course.

The incident was emotionally confusing, but more than that, it awakened my interest in the differences between Judaism and Christianity.

Things became even more confusing when I met a friend from the army at a cocktail party that weekend. He had married a Christian woman and invited me to join them for Shabbat prayers at a Messianic church. To my astonishment, there was a cross on their ark. Some worshippers wore kippahs. The hymns sounded Christian, but the melodies were entirely Jewish. After the service, the “rabbi” served the Eucharist—holy bread and wine, as in Catholic churches.

The combination seemed absurd to me, but I was deeply immersed in my flight studies and didn’t pursue it further.

The Missionary Years

Around that time, I met a Dutch woman and we got married—she was Catholic, and I was Jewish. We wanted to find common spiritual ground, so we went on a spiritual search: Hare Krishna, transcendental meditation—everything.

Eventually, I met some kind Christians who had a Bible study group. It was pleasant to be with them. I had some biblical knowledge from childhood, and their theology was familiar to my wife. I converted to Christianity quietly, without much fuss.

One day, the church’s main donor invited me to attend the weekly Bible study of all the city’s priests. He wanted to bring me closer to the inner circle. Every Sunday afternoon, I sat with Christian leaders, studying in great depth. I was a favorite—young, Israeli, and a flight instructor. From their perspective, I was a remarkable success story.

I became an active missionary and shared the “light” with everyone I met.

One day, the church members in Florida asked me to lecture about the bar mitzvah ceremony. I showed them how to wrap oneself in a tallit and explained how it envelops the body. I went on to explain that the arm tefillin is placed opposite the heart, and the head tefillin opposite the brain, which is divided into four compartments—just like the brain’s four lobes.

Questions flew at me from all sides. “What is the meaning of the knot behind the head?” The answer came instantly: “It corresponds to the brainstem, located at the point of the tefillin knot. The brainstem governs instinctive functions, commanding the heart to pump blood and the lungs to breathe.”

A woman in her seventies approached me with tears in her eyes and said, “In the name of the church, I ask permission to grasp the hem of your garment.” She lifted the edge of my tallit and cried, “Hallelujah!” The crowd responded, “Hallelujah!”

She raised the Bible and said, “Whoever wants the prophecy of the Old Covenant to be fulfilled, raise your hand!” Everyone raised their hands. She declared: “May the prophecy be fulfilled: ‘In those days, ten people from all languages of the nations shall grasp the corner of a Jewish man, saying: Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’”

I stood there, wearing tefillin, stunned. When I stepped down, church members bombarded me with questions and called me “Rabbi.”

The Debate

My family in Israel didn’t know what I was involved in. But my sister’s husband—a former priest—found out. He himself had an extraordinary story. His father had been the chief priest of Veracruz, Mexico. He followed in his footsteps and became a priest, but later left the church to explore other religions—Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism. He skipped Judaism because his father told him the Jewish people no longer existed and that Israelis were European settlers.

Then, during a visit to New York, he saw Hasidic Jews. That led him to travel to Israel, where he studied Judaism for two years. Eventually, he converted and married my sister. Later, he invited his brother to Israel, and he too converted. Not long after, their mother and five other brothers also converted and now live in Israel.

It later emerged that among the Spanish conquistadors who conquered Latin America after 1521 were also Marranos—Jews forced to convert who pretended to be Christians to escape the Inquisition. By the mid-16th century, Mexico City had more crypto-Jews than Catholic Christians, prompting the Inquisition to open a branch there. Today, over two hundred families of crypto-Jewish descent from Veracruz alone have converted.

My brother-in-law contacted me and warned that I was on the wrong path. He asked to meet and discuss theology. When the priests in Florida heard about this, they saw an opportunity to bring him back to Christianity. They arranged special preparatory lessons for me, showing me all possible arguments and counterarguments.

Months later, my brother-in-law and I met for a formal debate—a modern version of the Barcelona Disputation. We argued for days, then continued exchanging arguments for months—me consulting priests, and him consulting rabbis. After a year, I concluded that Christianity was false, having realized that Isaiah 53 and other biblical sources had been taken out of context and distorted to fit the narrative.

I stopped going to church.

Shortly afterward, Steve—the son of our church’s priest—called me to say his father had died and that he was expected to take his place. I offered condolences, but he interrupted me. He was having a crisis of faith and didn’t want the role. We spoke at length, and afterward he traveled to Israel for two weeks. I arranged for my brother-in-law—a former priest and son of a priest—to take him around and discuss matters of faith.

When Steve returned, he said to me: “What’s wrong with you? Judaism is a wonderful religion, Israel is a wonderful country—and you left everything for nothing!”

Some time later, I attended the wedding of a friend from the army in New York. I met my old unit friends—each married to a non-Jewish woman, with children wearing crosses around their necks. That’s when I understood: they trained us for military warfare, but not for cultural warfare.

Emergency Landing

After leaving the church, I deepened my Jewish studies. At that point, my wife gave me an ultimatum: “Either me, or your books.” I knew I couldn’t allow anything to stand in the way of my soul’s yearning. The choice was painful but clear. She boarded a plane and returned to Holland.

I returned to the fashion business I had started earlier in the U.S. and made extensive use of my plane to transport goods to the Caribbean and the Florida Keys. One night, I flew cargo to Key West and began the return journey after midnight. I planned to refuel at Key Largo, but a storm made landing impossible. Key West told me the storm was heading their way, so I had no choice but to try returning to Miami.

About twenty minutes later, I ran out of fuel and the engines shut down. I was at 7,000 feet and broadcast distress calls. I lost altitude and continued gliding. The Coast Guard told me there was a military emergency runway in the middle of the ocean, built on floating barrels. But visibility was zero—both due to pitch darkness and heavy rain—and there was virtually no chance of finding it. To make matters worse, the runway had been partially destroyed in the last hurricane.

The Coast Guard advised me to abandon the plane wearing a life vest and let it crash into the water. But the area was infested with sharks, and I had no chance of surviving until dawn when a rescue mission could be launched. I decided my only hope was to attempt a complex water landing and somehow survive. I used every flying skill I had to keep the plane at the right angle, hoping the landing wouldn’t tear it apart or send the nose plunging into the depths.

It was cold and dark, and I was terrified.

When I was about thirty meters above the water, I shouted: “Shema Yisrael!”

The next thing I remember is the plane landing on something solid.

I had landed on the runway.

I braked hard, exited into the thick darkness, and felt around. The plane had stopped just three meters from the edge. I sat there, frozen, wet, and afraid, waiting for sunrise so I could be rescued.

Here, for the second time in my life, God saved me from death. Since I was fifteen, I had known that a higher power was watching over me—but for all those years, I had turned away from Him. Sitting on that runway in the middle of the ocean, I asked myself: why did I cry out “Shema Yisrael” and not something else?

The answer is that when the end is right in front of you, everything falls away. All that remains is the naked truth, shining with absolute clarity. And so I decided to stop running.

Today, I am back in Israel, happily married to a wonderful Jewish woman, living a life of Torah and mitzvot, and fighting Christian missionaries operating in the country.