B”H
Miriam Ben-Yaakov has been
writing and teaching Torah for many years.
Miriam was
born to a Southern Baptist family in Washington
state. Her father was in the US Army until 1965, when he went into the ministry
and began pastoring churches. So the family lived in many places as she grew
up.
Within the church Miriam taught "Old Testament,"
including the Prophets' promises to Israel for ingathering to the Land
and Redemption for the world. Having lived in Germany for so many of her formative
years, she was particularly influenced by the gravity of the Holocaust. In 1985
she became involved in the Soviet Jewry movement, saying in letters over and
over: "Those of us born in a free country are obligated to those who are
not!"
Miriam converted to Orthodox Judaism in 1988. In 1990 her husband
was asked to go with Rabbi Meir Kahane to Fort
Worth, where he spoke at the first B'nai Noach
conference, sponsored by Vendyl Jones' institute.
In July of 1990, Miriam moved to Israel with her husband and two
daughters. During the thirteen years there, they lived in various communities
in Judea. Her older daughter, Amira, became a
Hebrew teacher and the younger, Yael, served in the Israeli army. Miriam
studied Torah at several yeshivot, and with various teachers, in Jerusalem and Safed. She
calls Avraham Sutton her primary teacher and mentor.
In the year 2000 she and her husband divorced, and in the
following year she began traveling in Asia and the US on what she calls her spiritual
journey. Meeting people of other cultures, she came to see the Noachide
Covenant in a whole new way. Encountering Israelis traveling after the army,
she came to see the journey of the secular Jew, searching for his Jewish
identity. The idea of ushering in the Redemption took on a new dimension.
Miriam is a practitioner of an energy healing method called Shefa
(a Hebrew word meaning "abundance"), which is becoming increasingly
popular in Israel.
Shefa is similar to the more commonly known method of Reiki, however, it is completely
based on Torah methods. She sees Shefa as a tool to bring the world closer to
Redemption, through prayer and repentance necessary for complete healing.
She returned to the United States
in 2004, living for a while in California, Texas, then Oklahoma
with her aging parents. She is currently serving as the Educational Director of
a new organization--Noahide Nations, which shares her international
vision for B'nai Noach in as an integral part of the Redemption of Israel.