Dear Rabbi Fohrman,

I am writing as a 60-year-old man who has known Hashem for as long as he can remember—since about age 5. That is when I began attending Greater Mount Olive Baptist Church and was first introduced to the Bible. Hashem was simply my best friend; I spoke with Him all the time. Years later, when I was seven, my mother asked me to become an altar boy.

The priest asked if I knew God. I told him Hashem was my best friend and that I talked with Him constantly. He asked if I knew Jesus. I said no. He then told me I could not know Hashem without knowing Jesus. That was the moment the relationship I already had was declared illegitimate. For the next forty-six years, I searched for the Friend I had known before that conversation. I knew the priest was wrong, but I was seven. What could I say?

I have lived with learning challenges my entire life—ADHD, dyslexia, number transposition, and a stutter that lasted into second grade. My mother is Spanish, born in the United States, with family roots running from Spain through Mexico. My father was Black, from the small town of Wellington, Texas.

I was raised largely by my great-grandmother, a block away from my parents. On September 11, 2001, my mother told me her family was Jewish. She had known they were not Catholic because they never did Catholic things.

Her mother lit candles on Friday night and observed a spring-cleaning ritual that, for a time, involved no tortillas. In 2017, DNA testing on my uncles returned Cohen Modal haplotype matches. Both of my uncles, Joe and Benny, tested positive, and both are related to Mr. Greenspan, the figure connected with FamilyTreeDNA’s Cohen testing.

I left Messianic Judaism and Christianity in 2015. I could not explain, even to myself, why my neshama insisted on recovering the truth that had been taken from me at seven. Around the time your first YouTube videos and the early Aleph Beta lessons appeared, I found Hashem again.

The close-reading method you pioneered—attention to chiastic structures, intertextual echoes, and the precise language of the text—revealed what I had always hoped was true: that the Tanach is the work of a single Author. That discovery has been the greatest joy of my life, and it has been worth everything else I have lost.

I live in the Texas Panhandle, along Route 66—something like Highway 60 in Israel. For the last twenty-five years my teachers have been almost entirely online. I studied Hebrew in Jerusalem with Rabbi Shlomo Gold. I learned with Rabbi Chaim Richman beginning in 2001 through God’s Learning Channel.

Aish was among my first online homes; there I found Rabbi Zev Leff. Rabbi Menachem Leibtag introduced me to Atbash, and I fell in love with it as Hashem’s signature on the page. Yet it is the methodology you have taught, and that your colleagues at Aleph Beta continue to develop, that has most consistently shown me the unity of the text.

I believe the Ten Sayings address the family problem that has marked the world from the beginning. Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson’s peer-reviewed work on the DNA of indigenous men worldwide points to three fathers and three mothers. Of the seventy nations, only two—Jews and Arabs—claim descent from Abraham, and the genetic evidence places a common Middle Eastern father roughly four thousand years ago.

More than 4.5 million people profess belief in the Hebrew Bible, yet many seek to replace the people to whom that text was given and to claim Jerusalem as their own capital. I know the arguments; I was taught them by leading Christian teachers and supported their work with significant resources. When I later asked hard questions about what I had been taught, I received no answers.

I have been married for forty-one years. We have nine grandchildren and one great-grandson. My family is now divided because we are Jews. The media has convinced some of them that we are evil. One of my daughters disowned me during Sukkot over claims about the Nakba and Zionism. She said she does not hate Jews, only Zionists.

I have lost former Christian friends and teachers. Our small esnoga, Beit HaShoavah, has gone from more than 100 people to 2. What I have not lost is the daily revelation of Hashem in the text. Yesterday, while studying Parashat Noach, I saw the homing beacon that draws us back to Him and the plow that breaks the stubborn ground—Lamech’s words taken up and answered by Hashem Himself. That is the kind of reading your work has trained me to pursue.

I love the Tanach the way Imu loves the Torah and wants to teach it. I am a Kabbalist at heart, yet the chiastic structures and intertextuality I have learned from you and from the scholars you have trained have shown me a single Author more clearly than any other method. That is the joy worth everything.

To the whole Aleph Beta team—Imu Shalev, Beth Lesch, and the scholars and producers who have worked alongside Rabbi Fohrman, including those who have contributed over the years such as Rabbi David Block, Rabbi Ami Silver, Daniel Lowenstein, and Ari Levisohn—I want you to know that you have been part of that restoration. When other rabbis speak of the one teacher who changed their lives, I now understand what they mean. You are that teacher for me.

With gratitude and respect,

Hazan Gavriel ben David
(Archie Lee Hunnicutt Jr.)
Esnoga Beit HaShoavah