This is the Vamo podcast with Marty Salman. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we are joined by special guest Dr. Jennifer Rosner,

affiliate assistant professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. She also holds academic posts at the King's University,

as is a Pacific University and the Messianic Jewish Theological Institute. Her passion is to explore the relationship with Judaism and Christianity,

and she spent time living in Jerusalem with her husband, Yona, before returning to the States. They have two children. Welcome to the show, Jen.

Thank you. It's an honor to be here.

And obviously, you have lots of things going on as I spoke to in the intro so far,

but you have so much more than that. So if you want to just add some color to what I've said so far,

talk about the finer things of your life, tell us about your family, whatever you want to say,

to give our listeners a little bit more information about who you are.

Yeah, sure. Thank you. I think one of the unique things about myself and my academic work is how closely connected it is to my story and my personal journey.

So that might be a helpful place to start. I was raised in a Jewish home, both my parents are Jewish.

Pretty strong Jewish identity without a local synagogue connection, so our Judaism was based and lived out in our home.

And I went off to a large public state school in California for my bachelor's degree, and it was there that really for the first time I heard the gospel.

And so my college years became a real journey of figuring out who is this Jesus guy and does he matter in some way to me.

And in my last, my final year of my bachelor's degree, I came to faith in Jesus and it really sort of reoriented my whole life, but also my professional trajectory.

So I was a political science major in college, planning to go to law school like most of the students in my department, and I just became so fascinated by Christian theology.

And it's, you know, it just sort of took over and I ended up at Divinity School instead at which point I was completely hooked.

And so kind of moved into this direction of getting my PhD in theology and teaching theology.

And it was really later, it was at the end of my MDiv program that the Jewish piece, which I had sort of shelved when I became a follower of Jesus because I had no idea what to do with it.

And I had no models for how to be Jewish and follow Jesus, which sounds so crazy to me now.

But I didn't. And that says something about the worlds of Judaism and Christianity.

And so it was at the end of my MDiv program that the Jewish piece started sort of clamoring for attention again. And I have basically spent both my personal and professional life since then figuring out what does it mean to be Jewish and to follow Jesus.

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