Morris Township convert: ‘With the Jewish soul inside, I had to go further.’ Ex-Christian pastor now preaches word of Torah

MORRISTOWN, NJ — This June, it will be 10 years since Yaakov Parisi, 60, was born.

Before that, Yaakov, the Hassidic Jew, the citizen of two countries, didn’t exist. In his place was a Christian pastor leading a life different in many ways from that Parisi knows now.

In June of 1998 is when Parisi finished his religious conversion before a Jewish court in Denver.

He moved to Israel, worked as an engineer and put his past — preaching fringe religious beliefs in the Bible Belt — behind him.

A few months ago, Parisi met with the rabbi who oversaw his rigorous year-and-a-half conversion in Denver, and the rabbi said it was time to tell his story.

One Jewish group, which invited Parisi to speak, billed it: “An intriguing story of an evangelical Christian pastor and his wife who in exploring the roots of their faith and their search for the truth arrive at the doorsteps of Judaism.”

It took Parisi from Brooklyn, where he grew up and became a cop, to California, Oklahoma, Denver, Israel and then to Morris Township, where he’s living and studying at the Rabbinical College of America.

He and the college have an arrangement, wherein he lives in an apartment on campus with his wife, Sarah, who converted with him, and shares the story of his conversion with Jewish groups around the world.

Rabbi Boruch Hecht, the college’s director of admissions, travels with him and tells listeners about opportunities at the college.

The purpose, they said, is to inspire Jews to further appreciate their religion.

But Hecht said there’s a message for everyone in Parisi’s story, and it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with Judaism — which Rabbi Moshe Herson, dean of the college, described as a religion that does not seek converts.

“All people should look into the meaning of faith, and not take it lightly,” Hecht said.

Back in 1992, Parisi was the pastor of a Christian church called Shalom in Southern Oklahoma.

At Shalom, he taught his congregation to embrace the rituals of the Old Testament — something he’d been doing since 1987, when he was seeking information on Passover as co-pastor at a church in Southern California.

His teachings at Shalom attracted some 100 families, but later drove them away as he called for Friday services at sundown and removed crosses from the church.

As his followers left, Parisi decided, “You can’t put this half of the book into this half of the book.” After almost a decade of trying, he stopped trying to reconcile the Old Testament and the New Testament.

He closed Shalom, moved to Denver and, by 1998, Parisi completed his conversion to Judaism before a Jewish court, where he took his Jewish name.

“With the Jewish soul inside, I had to go further,” he said.

He moved to Israel, where he obtained dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship.

All that time, he kept the story of his conversion quiet, only occasionally confiding in friends he thought might benefit from hearing it.

“It’s private,” said Parisi. “You really don’t have to go around publicizing it to everybody. And once you convert, you’re a Jew. You’re not connected to any other stuff. You just want to go on. You want to go forward.”

In an interview at the Rabbinical College of America, where he moved several weeks ago, he thought a moment before offering his given name: James.

He paused, he said, because he was trying to remember it.

The rabbi who oversaw Parisi’s conversion told him, “It’s about time to tell your story because it’s inspiring,” Parisi said. “It’s inspiring to get Jewish kids and Jewish people that aren’t excited about Judaism to show them the greatness of what they have.”

Parisi did share his story — about how he drove three hours each way from his home in Oklahoma to buy kosher food in Dallas while he was a Christian; how his wife would bring meals to him at the dining room table, where he studied Jewish texts 15 hours a day to incorporate the rituals into his Christian services; how 500 people in the overwhelmingly Southern Baptist city in which Shalom was located came to one Passover Seder, and how he finally left Shalom and moved to Denver “with $2,000 in our bank account, no friends, no family.”

The story quickly traveled through the Jewish community. Hecht heard the story and proposed the partnership. Parisi accepted and moved from Modiin Elite, Israel, to the college, the 82-acre state headquarters of the Lubavitch movement.

Some who have heard Parisi say he talks with a degree of passion usually associated with an evangelical preacher.

“He’s very full of passion,” said Howard Hein, a student at the college. “I could see that he was an evangelical preacher. Just the way he talks. The way he relates the story, you could tell.”

“I just do it,” Parisi said. “It just comes out from inside. When you speak the truth from your heart … that makes the best speaker.”

And Hein said the story does inspire him.

“I don’t think I could have gone through what he went through and be standing here today,” Hein said. “He gave up his livelihood to pursue his dream, to pursue what he felt was the truth. You have to have a lot of admiration for that. This guy came to this one conclusion for himself.”

Parisi said he still has friends from Shalom in Oklahoma.

“They’re still our friends and they go to Christian church,” he said. “They said, ‘What you did is good for you. It’s not for us.’”

With Passover coming at sunset on Saturday, Parisi and his wife are getting ready — cleaning out all traces of leaven from the refrigerator and cabinets, all traces of bread, pasta and cookies.

“It’s a celebration of freedom,” Parisi said. “It’s a celebration of getting the Torah. It’s a celebration of all the miracles that God did for us. We have to think we were there that night and come out and celebrate. And we are free.”