Asher Wade

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Asher Wade is a Chassidic Rabbi who frequently gives tours of Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum in Israel.

Although there have been a number of Christian clergy who have become Converts to Judaism, Asher Wade is one of the few who have gone on to become Rabbis in the Jewish faith. As an ordained Methodist minister, Asher Wade was moved by the commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of Kristallnacht on November 5, 1978, which he observed while attending the University in Hamburg in Germany working towards his doctorate in the field of Metaphysics and Relativity Theory.^[1]

He had already earned a B.A. in Philosophy in America and a post-graduate degree in Philosophical Theory at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. In addition, he had previously worked as an adolescent and marriage counselor at the U.S. Army Chaplaincy in Berlin while he was attending the Goethe Institute for Language Studies.^[2]

[edit] Kristallnacht

The local newspaper included graphic pictures of the destruction of Jewish homes and stores of Hamburg during Kristallnacht, among which was that of the Great Synagogue of Hamburg. Rev. Wade and his German born wife recognized that the site where Hamburg's once thriving 180,000 member Jewish community had worshipped was now their university's parking lot.

They began a historical investigation and found that the first to join Hitler's ranks was the Medical faculty, followed by the Law faculty. Five out of eight students, they found out, had openly joined the Nazi party.

[edit] Conversion

Rev. Wade and his wife then began to study about Jewish history and the Jewish religion. After about a year of study, they both decided to pursue conversion to the Jewish faith.

While living in America, he was contacted by Ner Yisrael Yeshivah in Baltimore which led to him and his family being sent to Jerusalem where he learned for a number of years at Yeshivah Ohr Somayach. Today, Rabbi and Rebbetzin Wade live in Jerusalem with their six children where he lectures, counsels, teaches and conducts tours of Yad Vashem.^[3]

[edit] References