In a family where love was abundant, but tradition often conflicted with true belief, two sisters found themselves on a path they never expected. Raised in a secular Jewish household, their lives were shaped by the common challenges of the day. But it was their later encounter with faith, and the compelling truths of prophecy, that would redefine their understanding of God.
Interviewer: Please tell us about your family. How did you grow up? How did your family come to America? What was life in your family like?
Lady 1: Well, we grew up in a very loving, secular Jewish family. Our mother was born here in Jacksonville, Florida, but her parents had come over from Russia. They had been religious. Our father was born in Poland, but he came over when he was four years old, so he basically grew up in the United States. Our grandmother and grandfather were religious. My grandmother made gefilte fish every Friday and baked challah bread. She was a self-taught woman. She taught herself to read, write, and speak. She was a very, very special lady.
Lady 2: And so we had a happy childhood. We did not know we were poor because we had so much love in our family. We had fun. We lived in the tenements of New York City in the Bronx. You want to tell them?
Lady 1: Well, before that, we lived in Harlem. You know, the immigrants always came to the poorest sections of New York. We lived in Harlem because my grandmother lived there. She’s the one that told me about her journey from Poland with two little boys at that time. But they had older children who had come first with our grandfather. Basically, she mentioned that she taught herself to read and write because Jews were not allowed to go to school in Poland. So that’s why she never learned formally. But she spoke really good English – a little accented, but not bad at all. She was a very smart woman.
Lady 2: So anyway, we did have a very loving family. When we were growing up, there were four kids and later five, several years later. But a little surprise at the end. Estelle is the oldest, born in 1932.
Lady 1: I’m next; I was born in 1933. Then we have a sister, Irene, who was three years younger, and a brother, George, three years younger than her. Our last sister came as a surprise. I was 17, and you were 18 when she was born. Our father was a very kind and loving person, but he was very disillusioned with religion. He felt like God didn’t really care. He didn’t know, especially when World War II came on and the Holocaust began. The wondering of most Jewish people was, “Where is God? How could this possibly happen?” And the fact that we couldn’t really afford to go to synagogue. There was a price you had to pay; there were only certain days that you could go without paying. That really bothered him. Anything else you want to say?
Lady 2: Well, I just felt like our family was so loving. That was the way I was going to bring up my family. I wanted to have four children. I wanted to do just what my parents did. So, I did approve of most of the things that they did.
Interviewer: You were growing up during the years of the Great Depression, correct? And your family wasn’t a well-off family?
Lady 2: No. Well, what happened was my father’s father died when he was 10 years old. And so that was very difficult. My grandmother allowed him to go to school until he was 14. He was a very good student. At that time, she said, “You just have to go out to work.” So, he wasn’t a skilled worker. He took whatever jobs he could get. That’s why—I don’t know if you know this, but in New York during the Depression, everybody was so desperate, even the landlords. So sometimes they’d give you a month’s free rent. I remember as, when we were quite little, moving quite a bit because after that month was up, maybe we could pay for another month, and then we’d say, “Maybe we better move somewhere.” So that was the situation, but we were never homeless, and I don’t ever remember being hungry. That was very important to our parents.
Interviewer: Yeah, and that’s maybe the reason why your father was, because of the poverty and this destitute situation, he was angry with God?
Lady 2: Yes.
Interviewer: Did you know anything about the Torah or Jewish traditions like Pesach? Was your extended family more religious than yours?
Lady 1: Oh, yeah. Well, we would have Passover, so to speak. Well, at our grandmother’s. Yeah, they did it every year. They’d have Passover, but we didn’t really know a lot. We knew the story. We knew Queen Esther. Everybody wanted to be Queen Esther. It was fun. We would go to the temple for Purim with our neighbors. So that was a fun time. But we didn’t really know. Tell them what you felt about the Bible as you were growing up.
Lady 2: It was a bunch of fairy tales.
Lady 1: Oh, no. When I started reading it, I thought the Bible was something I’d read later in life. I believed in God. I used to throw kisses to God at night when I went to bed. But I thought the Bible was something I was going to read when I turned 80. I thought that would be the time to do it. So, when I did start studying it, I did think of all the fairy tales because we lived at the library. We would go every week to the library, read all the books—Dickens and all the fairy tales you can think of. So, when I started getting the little Bible stories out, they seemed like fairy tales that I knew. I mean, men thrown in a furnace and all that. So that was my introduction and my thoughts until I came to prophecy.
Interviewer: So, you lived mostly your childhood, your youth, in Harlem. Was it a Jewish section, or…?
Lady 2: Yes.
Lady 1: It was a Jewish section. But they were starting, it was starting to change. So from there, we moved to the Bronx, which was also mostly Jewish and Catholic. Italians, you know, Italians and Jews always got along very well. Yeah.
Lady 2: The demographics changed, but we lived in the Bronx up until we were married.
Interviewer: So, we’re coming to the point where I would be interested to know, how did you learn about Jesus? But before I ask you this question, since you were secular, did you know anything about Jesus? And if yes, what did you think about Him?
Lady 2: I never heard His name. I never heard Him mentioned. I didn’t know who He was. We were either Jewish or Catholic. I didn’t know what a Protestant was, really. And so nobody ever told me about Jesus.
Lady 1: So just… it was more of an ethnic type of belonging rather than religious.
Interviewer: Yes. Very interesting. So, how did you… I don’t know if it’s separate or not, but how did you actually meet God and establish a relationship with God? And how did you learn about Jesus?
Lady 2: That’s the big story. It’s an amazing story. When I was 15, I met Anthony, who was to become my husband. He was Italian. He was Catholic. We went together for four years. Of course, there was a problem with my family, knowing that intermarriage was difficult. But Anthony happened to be a fan of the Giants, and my father was too, so they bonded right away. So, the New York Giants, that was his “in” with the family. Okay, so I was 15 to… what? I was 19. My father still… “What are you guys going to do?” And my fiancé at that time, he said he was going to be converted. He would become a Jew to please my parents, who were not religious. But he loved them, and they loved him. And so he was going to become a Jew. So, my father got right on it, and we went to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan.
We had a young rabbi assigned to us, and I was always curious, always asking questions. I asked him, “How come so many people in the world believe in Jesus, but the Jews do not?” And he said, “Seeing is believing.” I understood what he meant. He was telling me that when Jesus was on earth, the Jewish people saw Him and didn’t believe that He was the Messiah. And I accepted that because I thought the Jews must be right. My family was great, and I trusted their perspective. But you know what? God heard that question, and He was going to answer it for me.
So, we started studying Hebrew for the Jewish ceremony. Anthony and I were learning, but he was struggling with the Hebrew. We had met in March, and I had decided I wanted to get married in March – very sentimental. This was already January, so I started looking up Jewish temples in the Bronx in the yellow pages. The first two rabbis I spoke to didn’t want to perform the ceremony because they knew it wasn’t a true conversion. Then I called Bronx Community Temple, and Dr. Hoffman answered. I explained our dilemma, and he said, “Come on over tonight, and I’ll talk to you.”
That night, we went with my parents and our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Levy, to the temple. Dr. Hoffman explained that they were a congregation of Jewish Adventists who believed in the Bible, not tradition. I thought that made sense because I already knew tradition was man-made. But I didn’t fully understand what Adventists were. Dr. Hoffman said, “If you’ll study the Bible together, I’ll marry you.” I was thrilled because the Bible was in English, so we wouldn’t have to struggle with Hebrew anymore. So, we started Bible studies.
This was January, and I was determined to be married in March. Dr. Hoffman tried to convince me to wait until June, saying that June is the best month for weddings. But I insisted, “We met in March, and I’m getting married in March.” So we had very few Bible studies, which I honestly thought were like fairy tales. By the time we were married, he performed a Jewish wedding ceremony because he himself was a convert from Judaism. I thought, “Mission accomplished! I never have to see these people again.” I made a little donation, and I thought that would be it. But the Holy Spirit kept drawing us back for more Bible studies. Every week, we went back and started studying the book of Daniel.
When we got to Daniel 2, I went home and looked up all the dates in the history books to verify what we had learned. Everything checked out fine. But it was Daniel 9 that changed my entire life. One night, Dr. Hoffman said, “Tonight we’re going to see when the Jewish Messiah would come.” I was 20 years old, and in my mind, I thought, “I know it’s going to be the year 2000.” I loved math, so as Dr. Hoffman gave us dates and figures, I started doing the math myself. When we came to 27 AD as the year the Jewish Messiah would arrive, I almost fell off my seat. That was the most startling thing I had ever heard.
That night, I had to decide what I was going to do about Jesus. That is the question we all face in our lives—what are we going to do about Jesus? I thought my husband would be happy, but he didn’t have much of a religious background. As we walked home that night, I kept wondering, “What am I going to do about Jesus? How am I going to tell my family?” It was a struggle. For a while, I tried to forget about it, but God held on to me with a thin thread. A year later, when I was expecting my son, I knew I couldn’t bring up a child in any way other than as a Christian. So, I decided to be baptized. On September 30, 1953, just weeks before my son was born, I was baptized. I’ve never regretted it, and I thank God for intervening in my life.
Lady 1: At first, I thought Estelle was becoming a fanatic. She started talking about the Sabbath, and I thought, “Nobody keeps it anymore.” I didn’t understand why she was changing so much. One day, she and her husband were at our parents’ house, discussing a job Anthony had been offered. Estelle said, “You can’t take that job because it requires working on the Sabbath.” I thought she was crazy. I said, “Even a rabbi would tell you it’s okay to work if you have to feed your family!”
After that, I confronted her. I said, “I don’t know how you can believe in a God who asks for animal sacrifices.” She surprised me by saying, “What a wonderful question!” I wasn’t expecting that. She invited me to her apartment for a Bible study. When I went, she shared the 70-week prophecy from Daniel with me. It made sense. Everything she explained clicked. Soon, I started studying the Bible more seriously and realized that Estelle’s faith was genuine. Eventually, I accepted Jesus too.
My fiancé at the time was an engineer and didn’t believe in God. I asked him one day, “What do you think about God?” He said, “I don’t even know if there is a God.” We were married by a rabbi, but soon after, we both started Bible studies with Dr. Hoffman. By the end of 1954, we were both baptized. My husband later became deeply involved in ministry, and our lives were forever changed.
Interviewer: Thank you for sharing this incredible journey. It’s truly inspiring to hear how your faith shaped your lives.
Lady 1 and Lady 2: Thank you.
Interviewer: Let me ask one final question before we conclude. What advice would you give to people who may be searching for their faith or unsure of what to believe?
Lady 1: I would say, be open-minded. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and search for the truth. Sometimes the truth can be uncomfortable, but it’s worth it.
Lady 2: And don’t underestimate the power of prophecy. For me, seeing how the Bible predicted events with such accuracy was life changing. It showed me that God’s word is trustworthy.
Lady 1: Also, don’t let fear hold you back. Faith is a journey, and God is patient. He will guide you if you’re willing to listen.
Interviewer: That’s wonderful advice. Thank you both so much for sharing your stories and your wisdom. This has been a truly enlightening conversation.
Lady 1 and Lady 2: Thank you. It was our pleasure.
