Shmuel (Sam) Gordon was born and raised in Nigeria, Africa’s largest country with a population of 200 million. Shmuel was a sickly child and it was uncertain whether he would survive; indeed, he endured two near-death experiences. Then, at age 17, Shmuel had a “miraculous healing” and to show his gratitude, he devoted his life to God. Raised as a Christian (Nigeria is approximately 50% Muslim and 50% Christian), Shmuel attended seminary and at age 20 became a pastor. Renowned as a dynamic speaker and intellectual thinker, he led a church serving 1,000 people.
In 2005, Shmuel, his wife Shoshana and their three children moved to South Africa, where Shmuel started a congregation in Johannesburg’s Roodepoort neighborhood. His popularity soared – appearing regularly on TV and radio, and traveling throughout Africa preaching Christian gospel. Shmuel also trained other pastors, opening branches of his church in Ghana, Nigeria, and the United States (Texas and Georgia). Life was grand.
One night in 2011, Shmuel had a dream that would change his family’s destiny forever. “In the dream, a man engaged me in physical battle,” he tells Aish.com. “He would not let me go, and kept yelling: 'Now is the time to choose Israel!’”
The dream lasted all night, until Shmuel awoke frantic, shaking with the chills. “I didn't know what it all meant,” he recalls. “Dreams come and go, but this felt like much more.”
Soon after, a pastor from Norway invited Shmuel to a pro-Israel conference, and he became inspired to adopt pro-Israel activism in “response” to the dream. Shmuel founded the Africa-Israel Initiative to mobilize Christian leaders across Africa – counteracting anti-Israel media bias and speaking out against BDS and phony “Israeli Apartheid.”
Shmuel Gordon organized huge pro-Israel rallies across Africa.
Shmuel led delegations to Israel and organized huge pro-Israel rallies and conferences across Africa – in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo, Ghana, Zambia, South Africa, Nigeria, and Rwanda. To show solidarity with the Jewish people, Shmuel would often wear a tallit and kippah while leading throngs in the streets with pro-Israel banners, t-shirts and Israeli flags.
Speaking at a conference in 2014, Shmuel issued a clarion call to the African continent: “If you believe in the Bible, you must love Israel,” he said, thrilling the large crowd with his oratory skill and knowledge of Jewish history. “God’s covenant with the Jewish people is unshakeable, irreplaceable, immutable, irrevocable, and has no expiration date.”
Shmuel believed that by honoring God’s words to Abraham thousands of years ago – “Those who bless you, I will bless” (Genesis 12:3) – a new spirit of creativity, wealth, and spirituality could be unleashed throughout Africa.
Hidden Knowledge
Meanwhile, Shmuel was undergoing a noticeable transformation in his own religious observance, with his church sermons less Christian in content and increasingly more about Israel.
This process accelerated in 2013 when, on a trip back from Israel, Shmuel noticed a Jewish passenger intently reading a book. Intrigued, he approached the man and inquired; it was the Garden of Wisdom by Rabbi Shalom Arush.
Back in Johannesburg, Shmuel found a Jewish bookstore and devoured the book cover to cover. “I never realized that such wisdom existed,” he says. “From a Christian perspective, we were trained to think that the dynamic, flourishing religious Jewish community had basically ended 2,000 years ago with the exile – and that Christians were the new ‘chosen nation.’ When I read this book, I felt like a whole world of Jewish knowledge had been hidden from us.”
To show solidarity with the Jewish people,
Shmuel appears in tallit and kippah at a pro-Israel conference.
Shmuel got every Jewish book he could find, building up a library and sharing that wisdom with his family. “It was like opening a floodgate,” he says.
Shmuel purchased a Siddur and in 2014 the family began observing Shabbat. “For 24 hours, there was no work, no TV, no shopping,” says his oldest son Binyamin who was in high school at the time. “I was very into music, playing piano, and my band appeared on South Africa's Got Talent. But I put everything on hold to observe Shabbat. We'd sit around studying Torah, and then on Sunday attend church.”
One day, Shmuel came home and announced that the family was now keeping kosher. “We stopped buying meat, and instead would go to a farm, buy our own livestock, and have it slaughtered as best we knew,” Shmuel says. Then, given the Torah prohibition against eating animal blood, they would pour coarse salt on the meat and let the blood drain into their backyard barbeque pit.
Increasingly, Shmuel shared Torah ideas with his congregation. “My sermons attacked the fundamentals of Christian theology,” he recalls. “I told the congregation that the Trinity was a man-made invention and that we should pray not to an intermediary, but to one God.”
Shmuel pushed the envelope further by instructing the church choir to remove the name “Jesus” from all the songs at Sunday services.
“My life was torn in two,” he recalls. “The more Judaism I learned, the more disconnected I felt from Christianity. We stopped celebrating the various holidays. After nearly 30 years as a pastor, Sunday mornings had become my worst time.”
Shmuel’s church choir leads a rousing rendition of a popular Hebrew song
(lyrics projected on screen).
Closing the Church
The levee broke one Saturday night in 2016. Shmuel couldn't sleep, and the following morning – while delivering the Sunday sermon – courageously broke the news. “I told the congregation that I'd been doing research about my tribal heritage in Nigeria, and discovered that I’m Israelite,” Shmuel recalls. “I told them: ‘You're welcome to go wherever you want, but my family and I cannot continue practicing a faith we no longer believe.’
“Then I told them that, effective immediately, the church was closed.”
Chaos and commotion ensued. Some congregants viewed Shmuel as a traitor and issued death threats. Other congregants approached him saying they wanted to follow his Jewish path. So Shmuel formed a Noachide community and began meeting on Shabbat. From time to time, rabbis came from Israel to teach them the basics.
Some church members formed a Noachide community that meets on Shabbat.
(Shmuel is in the back row, center.)
Meanwhile, Shmuel redoubled his efforts for Israel advocacy. He resigned from the Christian group he'd founded, and joined forces with SAFI – South African Friends of Israel. There he found a kindred spirit in SAFI executive director Gavriel Sacks, whose mother had converted to Judaism.
Shmuel decided to become a Jew.
What about the Gordon family? “I didn't force anything on them,” he says. “I shared Jewish books and let them embark on their own journey. My wife was initially skeptical, and all three kids at the time were teenagers. But remarkably, they each discovered the truth of Torah for themselves.”
The Gordon family (L-R): Binyamin, Dovid, Shmuel, Shoshana, OriElla.
With the family united in resolve to become Jewish, they met with the highly-respected Johannesburg Beit Din and were accepted into the conversion program. They moved to a Jewish community, and underwent a daunting, two-year process. In August 2019, after a rigorous final exam in Beit Din, the Gordon family became Jewish.
Today, five of Shmuel’s former congregants are undergoing the conversion process, and more are expected to join. I ask Shmuel if it’s a challenge, given the small number of blacks in the South African Jewish community. “The Jewish community welcomed us very fast,” he says. “We never experienced any kind of discrimination.”
Binyamin Gordon studying Talmud in Jerusalem.
Binyamim, the eldest Gordon child, age 25, visited Israel recently for the first time on an Aish program. “When I got to Israel, people were speaking a different language, yet everything seemed so familiar,” he told Aish.com. “I felt like I'd been here before, that I was returning to a place I’d left long ago. I'm home.” He is now studying at Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem and hopes to return to South Africa this summer to arrange for aliyah.
OriElla, the Gordon’s daughter, is currently in Jerusalem studying at Neve Yerushalayim College.
The youngest, Dovid, attends high school in South Africa.
As for Shmuel and Shoshana, they have eyes set on aliyah. "I'm hoping my whole family moves to Israel, where I can study Torah the rest of my life," he says.
Shmuel is currently writing a book about his experiences, and wants to spread the light of Judaism to as many as he can. As for his native continent, he claims: “The soul of Africa was stolen many years ago. If we can connect with the Almighty in the right way, great light will come to Africa.”
(35) Vic huglin, December 25, 2020 11:24 AM
Amazingly inspiring journey
Another miracle story Our religion is open to all who strive to reach out
(34) Cynthia Y Johnson, August 30, 2020 12:39 AM
Awesome
So happy to learn of your liberation from the erroneous teachings and making the connection to HaShem.
(33) Anonymous, August 5, 2020 8:07 AM
this is so inspirational,thank you for sharing your story with us Gordon Family!
(32) Lea Liliane Segell, April 7, 2020 12:53 PM
This is one of the best articles I have red in a long time. I would LOVE to meet this wonderful family.
With much LOVE, Liliane
(31) Anonymous, February 17, 2020 12:50 AM
Seeking conversion
I am a sabbath keeping messianic pastor and requesting to be taught orthodox judaism to conversion
(30) Lucky, February 14, 2020 9:35 PM
I have long desired this sort of experience since age 17.
Israel is home to me even though I've never been there. I love the Holy One of Israel Blessed be He, the Torah, the Jews, and Israel. My dream is to study Hebrew in the land of Israel. Shalom.
(29) Bernardo Rabinovich, February 14, 2020 7:19 PM
Just, simply, beautiful and inspiring !!!! . God bless Shmuel, his family and beautiful, marvelous Israel !!!!!
(28) Rachel Sachs, February 14, 2020 10:41 AM
Inspiring and important
Thank you for researching about the Gordon family and sharing their very important and inspiring account of finding truth and Torah. We who leave xianity need to know of others and feel acceptance, support, connection and understanding.
(27) Deborah, February 13, 2020 7:52 PM
Deeply Touched!
As a British woman of Nigerian parents, this story touches me to the core! Amazing! Thanks for sharing!
(26) Yeshaya Rotbard, February 13, 2020 1:53 PM
With regard to contacting Shmuel Gordon
By way of introduction...I was a talmid of Rabbi Weinberg's in the early 70s...before Aish...I currently live in Monsey, NY and work for the Jewish Education Program of Rockland Co. (JEP)...I am in email contact with a family from Uganda and she appears to be following a similar path as the one depicted in the article from Rabbi Simmons. I sent the article to her and she expressed an interest in communicating with Shmuel Gordon. Can you help me in this regard? I look forward to your reply. Thank you for everything you do. Yeshaya Rotbard
(25) Yaakov Turin, February 12, 2020 7:35 PM
“He would not let me go, and kept yelling: 'Now is the time to choose Israel!’” [3rd. paragraph above] 'Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for thou has striven with G-d and with men, and hast prevailed.' [Genesis 32:29]. I see similarities and parallels in these two all night wrestling matches. Especially: "Shmuel had a dream that would change his family’s destiny forever.", and his descendants, as did Yaakov Avinu.
(24) sylvia, February 12, 2020 5:36 PM
such courage
This is all part of Moshiach’s arrival. This is a similar story to Yaacov Parisi’s story.
https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/video_cdo/aid/1416870/jewish/A-Pastors-Journey-to-Judaism.htm
These neshamas are finding their way home so they too can welcome Moshiach along with their brothers and sisters.
here is another amazing story:
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/from-neo-nazi-to-hasidic-jew-former-skinhead-who-discovered-his-jewish-roots-to-speak-in-montreal
there are many such stories – i saw a movie of a neo nazi leader who also found his Jewish heritage and struggled.. He was assisted with Rabbi Oberlander in Hungary. this story was made into a movie “Keep Quiet” can be seen on Netflix or Prime. There is a former African prince that converted and married and lives in Israel with his family. There are many more. All powerful stories and all signs of Moshiach!!!
(23) Yid24, February 12, 2020 1:54 AM
A Way to Contact Shmuel
Does Shmuel have a website or a way to be contacted?
As he begun speaking engagements?
(22) Chava, February 11, 2020 11:46 PM
Conversion
Mazel Tov you found the truth. Remember to do tshuvah, give Tzeddakah and worship Hashem. Love Him with all your heart, soul and might.
(21) Jackie Rose, February 11, 2020 10:23 AM
Wow....what an inspirational man. I loved reading his story.
(20) Jake, February 10, 2020 3:55 PM
Something amiss
I'm sorry, but there's something wrong with this story. If the pastor and his family wanted to convert, that's fine, their choice, obviously. But it should have been done quietly and privately. There was no reason to announce this to his congregation so dramatically and which such bad effects. Such a stunt puts Jewish lives at risk anywhere someone hears this story and decides Jews are sneaky, stealing souls, etc. There's a reason proselytizing, which is what the pastor did, is never done by Jews.
Gila, February 10, 2020 9:39 PM
"Quietly and privately" would have been impossible
He was the pastor of a church! How, exactly, was he supposed to convert to Judaism without letting his congregation know what he was doing?
(19) ruth, February 10, 2020 3:50 PM
Mazaltov!
The hardest part is yet to come. you all have what it takes. Welcome home!
Ari, February 12, 2020 3:23 AM
What is the hardest part?
What is the hardest part?
(18) Lauren shavitz, February 10, 2020 3:26 PM
I love this
What a great story!
(17) Naomi, February 10, 2020 6:51 AM
So inspiring
Wow! What an inspiring story. Thank you for sharing and may Hashem continue to bless you and be with you on your incredible journey!!
(16) Peter A Cohen, February 9, 2020 11:42 PM
Africa is full of Jews.
It would appear the lost tribes got lost several times. Abudaya, Lemba, Ibo, Tutsi are all descended from Jews or have converted based on belief in their descent. The work of Professor Tudor Parfitt and Rabbi Michael Freund has opened up the world of Kulanu, "All of Us"...…………….now many Africans have told me they deeply regret ostracizing Israel after the Bandung Conference in 1955. They scapegoat Ghanian Autocrat Kwame Nkrumah, but not one forced them to let the Arabs and Leftists buy them off. Almost 70 years on, they are beginning to realize it-better late than never. Some, like Angola, have gone the full mile-Angola has literally banned Muslims from entering Angola, and any who live there either convert to Catholicism or leave Angola. Even Israel wouldn't approve of such measures.
(15) Chana Rochel, February 9, 2020 10:17 PM
Amazing
I continue to be so inspired when I read stories such as this one. May you continue to find the joy in your journey and be able to make Aliyah.
(14) Mahaleah, February 9, 2020 8:44 PM
Bless HaShem, welcome back, Shmuel, to Torah and the laws of HaShem.
keeping the laws of HaSham is my greatest joy.
(13) Elisheva, February 9, 2020 7:39 PM
I have a story very similar of Shmuel
We were also Hispanic pastors of 3 churches at South West Florida, USA. A year ago we made Aliyah, we actually live in Jerusalem.
(12) Anonymous, February 9, 2020 7:08 PM
An Amazing Story!!
I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes--- What a beautiful life! Although I live in the southern US, our stories share some similarities. Unfortunately,, between divorce, single parenthood, inconsistent child support, multiple-bouts with cancer, and the 6-7-hour hour round-trip, I have not been able to complete an Orthodox conversion, but I have done "what I could" (for now). In addition to accessing online resources, I have completed a Reform conversion and have assumed leadership roles in my very small (no rabbi or paid staff), elderly congregation. Interestingly, both of my children self-identify as Jews and the youngest has also completed a Reform conversion. Additionally, he has assumed leadership roles in his college Jewish community and is committed to having a Jewish family. Thank you for sharing your courageous story and inspiring those of us in remote areas to never give-up!
Ed, February 9, 2020 11:55 PM
Sorry
Judaism is the word of G-d. It doesnt need man made reform. Your commitment is truly admirable, but a reform conversion is worthless. Self identification as a jew is similatly worthless. G-d says how to convert. He hasnt changed His Mind or given us license to reform.
Your solidarity is heartwarming-you are obviously a sensitive and special soul. I dont mean to hurt you, only to educate.
One more point, there is no need to convert. We all have our job, and you have yours as a non jew just like jews have theirs. Ask your local orthodox rabbi if you want to hear tje real unadulterated truth.
Hatzlocho!
Riche, February 10, 2020 7:04 PM
Reform?
Apologies if I have misunderstood your comment, but just to clarify- the Gordon family underwent a strictly Orthodox conversion. A completely committed, inspired and inspiring family, and refined in a way that I can only ever imagine to become.
Ed, February 10, 2020 8:15 PM
Agreed
Of course! My comment was directed to anonymous (12)
Ronit, February 11, 2020 9:28 PM
Have some compassion
Wow, Ed. Learn some compassion. This person wants to convert and obviously has a lot of roadblocks in their way. Telling them that what they’ve done is “worthless” is too harsh. Take a walk-in their shoes before you try to “educate” them on something they already know. V’ahavta l’reakha kamockha, akhi. Don’t be a jerk in other words.
(11) Kendrick, February 9, 2020 7:04 PM
It always seems impossible, until it's done.
I started living, after discovering Judaism. I am glad to be part of this journey.
(10) Gail, February 9, 2020 6:16 PM
Mazel Tov --- Welcome To My Brother
May G-d Bless you and your entire family.
We your Jewish brothers and sisters hold those that chose to become Jewish in the highest regard.
Your journey and dream was meant to happen.G-d needs more angels to Bless this world that has become so anti Israel/Jewish.
Your story has made my day filled with pride and happiness.
Mazel Tov and Welcome To My Brother !!!
(9) Mandla, February 9, 2020 4:18 PM
What a Story, May Hashem bless you
Wow what a story this is truly inspiring, I respect the way you so true to yourself. May the truth of Hashem be revealed to as much people as possible. There's no better religion than the true religion Judaism, it is so scary how the world is so confused. Hear, O Israel: HASHEM is our GOD HASHEM is the One and Only.
(8) Alex Zelczer, February 9, 2020 4:07 PM
A beautiful story, I enjoyed and appreciate it very much.
Keep up your fantastic good work.
(7) Ra'anan, February 9, 2020 3:48 PM
Mind-blowing! Reminds me of ministers in S. America & Texas who...
followed similar paths, slowing observing more & more Torah precepts. The Jewish sages say in Ethics of Our Fathers that fulfilling one Torah precept leads to another. This also happened with the wonderful family of Penina Taylor as told in her book.
(6) Keta, February 9, 2020 3:32 PM
Torah Torah Torah! Our light
Torah Torah Torah! Our light! The Jews are a light to the nations. I completely identify with his journey as mine is parallel.
Ana Weber, February 9, 2020 3:46 PM
Inspiring and deeply moving story
I am inspired by this story and excited to share with others
(5) Evelyn Fabrikant, February 9, 2020 3:31 PM
Discovering your soul
Shmuel Gordon showed amazing courage- to follow his craving soul in a direction and path that - like our Patriarch Abraham- meant to leave his home family and people - to journey to find himself. A beautiful inspiring story
(4) Linda, February 9, 2020 2:20 PM
An inspiration for us all
The story of Shmuel Gordon and his family is the story of Superheroes! A Man and Woman and their three children travelled the path of truth seekers. Each individually faced their unique challenges and had the courage to relinquish everything that obstructed their path to the TRUTH. What an inspiration to witness such self sacrifice. May Hashem Bless them to continue for their sakes and for ours! It is an honour to know them.
(3) Raymond, February 9, 2020 1:57 PM
A Thoughtful Man
What an amazing, incredible story this is. Just think how far this man had to go, and what he had to give up, to become Jewish. He had been such a popular Christian minister, and so his practical side could have caused him to stay where he was, as he was such a career success, and yet he gave it all up because he has integrity. I think that the key to it all is that even back in his Christian days, he was known to be a thoughtful man. Well, the more thoughtful a person is, and the more committed a person is to discover the real truth of things, the more likely that person is to resonate to Judaism. He is a special man, and so is his entire family. look forward to reading his book.
(2) Josh, February 9, 2020 1:18 PM
Amazing!!!!
I cried during this whole article. Koved kovod you story is so incredible and Hashrm is so great to fulfill His promises for peace !!!! And love between all people sharing and loving the One incredible God together shalom my brother and may God be with you
(1) Chaya, February 9, 2020 10:42 AM
Amazing !
A dream inspired his Return. Beautiful.