MSI Press Blog

  Book Excerpt from Since Sinai by Shannon Gonyou (currently in Amazon Top 100 Jewish biographies) Foreword This book is about my journey as a woman raised Catholic in a town with very little exposure to Jews and Jewish ideas who subsequently became Jewish. If you picked up this book, it could mean one of a few things. Maybe your family has been Jewish for generations, and you’re curious about why a total stranger to Judaism would want to join the community. Maybe you’re considering Judaism for yourself and are curious about what the process of conversion will look and feel like. Perhaps you’re a devoted Christian, curious about what would lead someone away from Christianity. This book will strive to provide a satisfactory answer to all of those questions. My high school English teacher told me that every piece of writing is a persuasion piece. I think that’s true, but this book is not here to persuade you that Christianity is “wrong” or that Judaism is “right.” I won’t even attem...

  Book Excerpt from  Since Sinai  by Shannon Gonyou (currently in Amazon Top 100 Jewish biographies) CHAPTER 1 “Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you.” — John C. Maxwell I told my husband that I wanted to convert to Judaism on Christmas Eve. We were sitting in our Chevy Impala in a grocery store parking lot in Ann Arbor, Michigan when I broached the topic [BL1]   . We were living in Chicago at the time, but we had traveled back to Michigan for the holidays. Christmas gifts for our family members were toppling over in the back seat, and a tin box of snowman-shaped Christmas cookies from my mother-in-law rested heavily on my lap. We had just picked up some ingredient that my mom had forgotten to buy for Christmas Eve dinner, and we were supposed to be making a quick trip back to our hotel room to change clothes before heading to the celebration. I decided that during this quick ten-minute jaunt from a grocery store to the Extended Stay Br...

  Judaism and Christianity share the same spiritual soil — the God of Israel, the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophets, the covenantal story. But from that shared root, two distinct religious worlds grew. The differences are not small. They shape how each community understands God, revelation, salvation, and the purpose of human life. 1. The Foundational Divergence: Who Is the Messiah? The single most defining difference is the question of Jesus . Christianity proclaims Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God , the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures. Judaism maintains that the Messiah has not yet come and rejects the idea of God appearing in human form. This is not a minor disagreement — it is the theological watershed from which all other differences flow. 2. How Each Faith Understands God Both religions are fiercely monotheistic, but they articulate God differently. Judaism emphasizes the absolute oneness of God — indivisible, unchanging, not incarnate. Christianity professes a T...