SID: Hello, Sid Roth here with Mindy Seta, and Mindy, on Rosh Hashanah of all Jewish Festivals, what does Rosh Hashanah mean to you?
MINDY: Well now it means “a new beginning,” that’s the day that the Lord revealed himself to me, it was my new beginning as a believer in him.
SID: All right, so you called your girlfriend, who is Jewish but believes in Jesus, and you don’t want anything to do with her, but now you do, so when you get her on the phone, what happens?
MINDY: Well I called her and I said, “Helene, happy Rosh Hashanah, this is Mindy, I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, what do I do, where do I go to church?” And she, I didn’t know she was still Jewish, but she was of course. And she said “Well I am going to Rosh Hashanah services, and I was shocked, I thought why, I thought you were a Christian. She said “No, I’m a Jewish person who believes in the Jewish Messiah.” And she asked me if I would like to go to service and I thought well okay, how much are tickets, because usually you have to buy tickets.
SID: Of course, churches have offerings and synagogues you buy tickets, seats.
MINDY: Exactly, but she said no, there is this place it is called the Messianic Synagogue, and we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, would you like to go? And I said well yes, of course. So she told me where it was, it was brand new, it was in California, it was only two months old, and so I walked in, I went and I met her there and it was amazing, because there was every nationality of people there, and there was traditional liturgy about Rosh Hashanah and Yeshua, Yeshua was in the liturgy, and I said what is Yeshua, who is Yeshua? And I was told that Yeshua is Jesus’ Hebrew name and I was, because I never knew that you could be Jewish and believe in him. And it was wonderful, it was wonderful to go there and all of a sudden being Jewish and going through the first fall feast as a believer in Yeshua, the holidays came alive, because they are his appointed times with us And it was tremendous, and it has been tremendous ever since.
SID: You told me about this one woman that came toward you and she was wearing a Jewish star around her neck.
MINDY: Yes, yes, I had never been to church and there were many people, I was so overwhelmed by all the people and just that I could even be here, this young gal who at that time was about my age came up to me and introduced herself and you know I said are you Jewish, and she said no, but I love the Jewish Messiah, my Jewish Messiah. And I was so deeply touched in my heart, that has been, besides Yeshua, that has been the most impacting thing in my life.
SID: But you know you told me that you loved it but you really had some difficulty getting into the worship and the dance and everything, and one day you go for a class of Jewish dance, what happened?
MINDY: Well after all the holidays were over, the regular services started and they had the weekly praise and worship, which to me was forty long, grueling minutes that I had to sit there, I couldn’t stand it, go outside. And they offered very early on, they said we are going to start doing Messianic dance, and I thought okay, dance, will maybe that would make the time fly, maybe I should go because I am embarrassed to sit outside while they do this, and I went, and we started doing some folk-style type dances, dances in a circle together. And we were doing something that was just very easy, almost walking around, just raising our arms to the Lord and thinking about the song and a scripture and something happened, it was as if Yeshua himself reached down and pulled me up to his place, to the Throne Room perhaps, or to the Holiest of Holies, it was so impacting, and what that did is it changed my worship forever, I didn’t dance for a while, but when I went to Shabbat services, weekly services…
SID: How did it change you?
MINDY: Suddenly I was able to enter into the worship, suddenly that worship, that place of worshipping him was real and present, and he was present. And I didn’t dance for a while because I didn’t know how to dance; I just was able to sit at his feet to worship, to praise him.
SID: Now when you made this mega-jump to what I’ll call intimacy with God, rather than on the outside looking in, you are now on the inside, you are in the inner courts, you have intimacy with God, your husband has a problem, what happened?
MINDY: Yes, at the time because I was newly married, I was only two months of married person and then over this course of a few months I became a born-again, on fire, zealous excited woman, not only for Yeshua, but for all of these Jewish festivals, that he is, he is. And it was very difficult, my husband at the time hated it, hated me, hated the word, hated Judaism, hated everything.
SID: So why didn’t you just leave belief in Jesus, why didn’t you just leave that synagogue, why didn’t you just leave the dancing?
MINDY: I offered, I offered to do whatever he would want me to do and we tried different places and it was really the Holy Spirit in him, he couldn’t, it wasn’t about me, it wasn’t about him, it was about him not being able to, I guess, come to a place, he couldn’t stand, he loathed, he loathed it.
SID: Now when you dance tell me what goes on, when you are dancing Jewish dance.
MINDY: When I am dancing Jewish dance it is as if I am dancing with Yeshua face to face.
SID: Now you grieved a lot when you were divorced, how did dance fit into it, did it help you?
MINDY: We stayed married after I became a believer almost, well for seven years and I started dancing very shortly after I became a believer. It was so miserable at home so much of the time that when I would dance it relieved, it took it all away, it took all of the pain away, it was still difficult, life is difficult sometimes, but being able to express your love and sense the presence of the Lord, is tremendous, and that dance, that worship did that.
SID: And you know what is amazing is Mindy is telling me that many people get physical healings when they dance, they get especially emotional healings. Is it fair to say that the only relief you had when you were going through that turmoil was when you were dancing to God?
MINDY: Yes, it is very fair to say that and it was difficult at the same time I had to pray a lot because, because I would have so much joy while I was dancing and I felt a little guilty, like maybe I should be miserable all the time. But the Lord doesn’t want that.
SID: It’s a very Jewish, very Jewish feeling. Tell me one quick story of someone that had a wonderful thing happen because they did Jewish dance.
MINDY: Well at our workshops we, it is open to everybody, for people with no experience and people with lots of experience, we had a lady who really had to, she just had an aching and yearning desire to worship the Lord in dance and she hadn’t before and she came and we offered prayer during that, and she expressed that she had chronic back pain, she really couldn’t dance but her heart’s desire was to, and so she danced and moved and we prayed for her, and we got an email and call from her later that she was healed.
SID: As you know I have been involved in a lot of Messianic Jewish congregations, especially in my early years, and the place that the greatest presence of God is in these Messianic Jewish synagogues is on the worship and on the dance, and I love the title of your DVD, it is called
“Teach Your Feet to Praise the Lord.”
