TAKE UP THE CHALLENGE
Print format

From: Peggy Y.
Date: Thursday, June 26, 2008, 12:29 PM
Subject: Take up the Challenge
ID: 262078

DAVID PERLMUTTER

Greetings all you who are from time to time, like me, wish I could see you, perhaps Try to play some tricks on Hargreaves, Williams, or wake Ralph House up from his nap during the Film or reading. It would be good to also provide a stimulant to Oken, so he could look us in the face.

Some people call life a journey. Yes, it is for all of us. We struggle in everything we do to find our own happiness. In that I am in agreement with many who lived during darker days, when health meant living short existences, where there was Kaiser clinic or HMO Or even prevention of diseases we have rarely seen in our lifetimes.

If you remember me I played the violin at school, and even in the Boys Gym tried a piece or two. Well, at college I was acquainted with Handel’s Messiah, something totally new, And yet, I was concertmaster and expected to play it as accompaniment to the Choir. I attended Pomona College in Claremont and a fellow classmate I had previously met in my senior year. Yes, I met Dan Lund, who was student body president at Venice High previous to coming to Pomona College. Why do I single out this man, a gentile to be sure, when I was a Jew, not religious, but just one who went through the tradition, like most of us. So why is he important in my life? Why should you hear about my life at college so many years ago? Is it not just a way station to either get popular, successful, Or a way to a job for life?

No, Dan could have had less interest in me than many of us do to a strange dog or a strange cat. But somehow, he asked me a very profound question. “David, tell me about the God you worship”. Now, the tone was mellow and yet serious and since I knew him And rarely got time to be with him, the question pierced my heart. “David, I said to my soul, what does that mean that he wants to know about my worship” After all he acts like Jesus in his friendship with me, listens to social talk, rarely makes comments, but Yet acts like he knows what life is about, and one other thing, he seems to know Jesus. He just does. He attracts people, he laughs, he is kind, yet he has purpose in his life. He also moves fast when he as to walk. There is something I have never seen in others.

By literature and his person, he introduced me to God. However, he told me to balance out my study of the Bible with my studies. He knew I was Jewish, but no Jew I had ever meant, nor gentile, seemed to care about me, without pushing me into anything about religion. He never talked about it and the courses I took in philosophy and religion hardly had any impact on me. My heart was out of sort with my mind and my desire to really know God personally. So graduation came and we parted, but I came back to his home in Culver City, some time after I had been away from college. Dan asked me if I knew the LORD’s Prayer. By that time I had read the gospels in the New Testament and God had knocked on my heart, but no other person had been in the path or journey I was traveling on.

When God knocked on my heart it began at college while I was teaching Sunday School At an Orthodox Synagogue. It was amazing that though I did not freak out as a teacher to kids of Orthodox persuation, I was being brough to know Jesus closer every day, as the knocking on my heart became stronger and stronger. I never discussed it with anybody but I knew what was really happening. In my own way I apologized for living without Him, God, and told Him I was listening and doing what would cause His Holy Nature To be offended and because I was so far from His Being, I asked God in His Holiness To forgive and make me knew. I did not know much real talk, so I just kneeled at my bed and cried out, Please Help Me Lord.

Well, then comes the cost of following Jesus. My parents disowned me and made me leave the home in Tujunga and I was chased by my dad’s revolver which he used as a railway mail clerk in sorting baggage mail in his job.

Should you wish to know more please call me at 858 623-9424 ext 380.

I do really hope some of you will take up the challenge.

Sincerely, David Perlmutter, VHHS, Summer 1959