Justified - The Testimony of Evangelist Rocky Freeman

The Discipline and Burdens of an Orthodox Jewish Home

Being born in an Orthodox Jewish home has many advantages and it also presents many problems. Being born in an Orthodox Jewish home means that you know discipline as I related to The young people and I've talked to others about it in a Jewish home.

In an Orthodox Jewish home, which is the strict sect. It's those who follow the feast those who follow the law and adhere to the law of Moses. Explicitly without any variances whatsoever. You learn extreme discipline at a very early age at four years of age.

You began to study the Bible you began to study Hebrew and you began to study Judaistic history. You began to study the history of the people of Israel. By the time I was five years of age I could speak English and I could speak Hebrew and I was well on the way to memorizing the first five books in the Bible.

Much of the Psalms and much of the prophets working my way. Towards becoming bar mitzvah the son of the law or the first time a man whenever I approached the age of 12 and between the Age of 12 and 13 and also has many disadvantages.

I know that everybody thinks all the Jews got all the money. We don't have all of it. We just got most of it, but Everybody thinks that a Jew is a little short slimy greedy character. That's a money-making machine and he owns a pawn shop or a dry cleaning store or a shoe store.

And that's the general concept of a Jew, but it's not always that way in many cases it is my dad was in the dry cleaning business and We didn't have a lot of money and I was born in Nashville, Tennessee.

It was one of the largest religious centers in America. Almost every religious group has offices there. I lived in the same house for 17 years and not one time. Not one knock on the door. Ever came for anybody from any church of any group or any denomination or anything religious to knock on our door to tell us that there was a Savior in the world and that Jesus cared about us and I learned that we didn't have a lot of things and So I determined at a very early age.

Persecution, Schooling, and Early Rebellion

I was gonna have better clothes. I was gonna have more money and I was gonna have more material possessions than any person that I knew of in my age bracket. Any of my personal friends and I set out on this goal being raised in a Jewish home.

I've known persecution. I've never been stoned and and I've never been beaten because I was a Jew, but I've been cursed. I've been mocked. I was laughed at in school. I was made fun of by the kids that I went to school with.

Whenever I was a of the junior age like these the kids made fun of me. They used to run along the side of me and sing little songs to me making fun of me. I don't know what the song meant, but I cured that.

I got me a cue stick and I cut it off and I took the heavy end of it and I carried that down in my trousers and I'd run and run as fast as I could run and if they could stay up with me then I stopped it.

I reached out and tapped him lightly and that slowed him down a little bit. And so the word got around and they quit running along beside me singing little songs. Whenever I was five years of age, I could read and write.

I could read third grade readers and I could write about as good as I can now. That's not much help, but I could I mean not print. I could actually write so consequently when I went to public school. They skipped me from the first grade to the third grade.

They don't do that much anymore, but they did then and Because I could already read and write and I could already do what the kids could do in the first and second grade. So this put me in an age bracket of kids three and four years older than myself.

And so naturally I tried to stay up with them. Now I went to a public school five days a week and on Saturday morning on the Sabbath I got up real early and I had to go to Hebrew school and I stayed there all day studying Hebrew and Studying the Bible and studying in the history of the people of Israel and one thing in a Jewish home.

See, I couldn't run home. Like some of you kids do if the teacher gets you at school. You're all gonna tell your mom and dad and your mom and daddy goes down there wants to fire the teacher run him out of The school I'll get him fired, but not so in a Jewish home I made a mistake of going home one day and I said daddy that rabbi whipped me.

And I think you ought to go down and talk to him. My daddy took me upstairs and he whipped me and so I learned then and there that when the rabbi said something brother I didn't go back and tell anybody about it.

I was raised in this sort of an atmosphere. So I moved in to junior high school and and I began to do things like a lot of the kids did and I wanted To be accepted by my friends. I mean, I didn't want to be made fun of and I didn't want to be laughed at and I didn't want to be ridiculed and Friends I ran around with they drank a lot, you know I mean even in high school and so whenever I was 12 and 13 years old, I decided that I would take some alcohol.

You know, I'd be like my friend. I'd drink some beer and we found a lady who'd sell this to us. And so we went in. I found if you take a quart you could drink a quart real quick. So he just turned up and guzzling and you wouldn't have to drink more than one quart and we just turn up just drink it.

As long as we could and and I could get high on that say and so I'd be alright by the time I was 15 years of age I could take a half a pint of moonshine in one hand and a seven up in the other hand and I could take Moonshine and drink it and one swallow and with another swallow drink that seven up and I could walk a straight line.

And I wouldn't get sick in just the two years that I began drinking. It had become a part of my life a daily ritual with me. I was not alcoholic I don't believe but it became a thing that we just did it now all schoolteachers.

I believe hate Jews I'll tell you what. I had the hardest time with my schoolteachers. I mean no matter what listen we said alphabetically. My last name is not Freeman, I mean that's my name now, but my family name is Friedman.

Friedman my dad drove a car for Al Capone back in the early days and he had a big shootout up there and they get Scared and he went to California and changed his name to Freeman and stayed out there a couple years and he came back in the Nashville area and there he met my mother and she kind of straightened him out and he dealt cards professionally for a while.

But I was in school, you know. And I was running around with these kids and I want to do a lot of things and and the teachers just didn't understand me. My last name started with an F. But I always got the last seat in the last row and I never did understand that until I got a little older.

You know because we had pairs in our school for instance, and you could buy them a penny apiece. Well, everybody say the core and they'd give them to me and I'd carry a sack of apple and the teacher be writing on the blackboard.

You know and all of a sudden splat right off the blackboard. They had baby. She wouldn't even look. She just turned right around say go to your homeroom and pointed me and I don't know how in the world.

She knew and so I always said she hates Jews. That's reading she picks me out. And so I taught myself that and I learned that you could get out of a lot of things by saying that you're in a minority Group, I learned that early.

Why listen boy anything happen me. I said, you don't like me cause I'm a Jew. I'm gonna tell my mama that you call me a Jew. Don't listen. Don't you go? I didn't call you that now and boy they come off of it real quick and I say, yeah.

You're talking about me because of my religion. That's what you're doing. You told me cause I'm a Jew. You don't and boy the teachers they just scare me. I was gonna tell my rabbi tell about they're making fun of me.

There are many things that I could tell you about my young my teenage life. But I began to wander from the discipline of my parents. My parents have always loved me. I believe that even today, although I have no contact with my parents.

They love me. They just don't understand but my mother and dad worked hard and most Baptists couldn't belong to a synagogue. Most of you people have all done denominations. You couldn't cost you too much money.

You couldn't do it. You see they auction off the position beside the rabbi on his right hand side. Every time they have a Passover he stands and read the scripture now the one who stands there doesn't get to say anything.

He just gets a privilege of standing beside the rabbi. I've seen that sell for four or five thousand dollars if you sit on the eastern side of the synagogue it costs more money than it does if you want to sit on the western side because the eastern side is the east side toward Jerusalem you see and the Passover meal will cost you from 75 to 150 dollars.

Well, they'd cut out most of you southern Baptists right there. Why they wouldn't go with anything if it's gonna cost that much money. So don't talk about the Jews being tight dear friends if you never get a Baptist to give to God.

You've got him hook line and sinker. He sold out to God if you never reach him get him to reach in there and give God what he wants. But uh when I moved into my senior year in high school, I figured I had a team, you know.

Leaving Home, the Navy, and a Descent into Crime

So I came home and I said mother two weeks before final exams. We were starting review. I said I want to quit school. She says what I said mother. I want to quit school. She says you can't quit school.

And I said mother. I want to quit school. I want to join the army. She said you can't join the army. If you join the army, they'll have a war some you get killed. I said, let me join the Navy. I said they don't do anything.

They sit out on those big ships and white uniforms three meals a day and fire guns 25 or 30 miles, you know, and She says no you can't do it. I said well if you won't let me I'll be a bum. I won't work.

She says well, how do you do. What school next day that night? I packed up and I left home and I went to Sarasota, Florida. Where's a winter carnival grounds for most of your carnivals down in that area?

And I joined a midway down there a big organization was the world's largest midway at the time. They played all the state fairs and there I had two jobs. They let me operate the little electric cars that bump each other and then I was the assistant talking to the freak show now we Had ten supposedly freaks now, you know what I'm talking about.

I've seen people line up for two or three blocks to see something. There's no more unnatural than than anything else and we advertised when on the dongle hung a bungee a high-flying monkey. And we said he'd die from 150 foot tower into a damp dishcloth and we'd sit and advertise that and I've seen people line up.

Two blocks in the rain to come in and see that monkey jump from 150 foot tower. Into a damp dishcloth and they'd come in and we'd have I owner the jungle girl. Mother nature's only begotten child. She was born of normal parents, but look at her.

You know the body of a human being the head of an alligator mother nature's only forgotten child here. She is for dying. Ten cents one-tenth of a dollar and on we'd go and we just ratted off and I've seen people come in.

And they'd come through that thing and walk two miles back down the midway. Are they get almost out of the gate and they've snapped their fingers and say wow. We didn't see a monkey jump off no hundred fifty foot tower in there and they'd come one and back up there.

You know the show just continuing on on and on and on and so I learned many things from those people. I learned they were a strange breed of people and they had no morals really just they just did their thing and they went on.

And it was a hard life and I stayed there three or four months and I got tired of it. So I came back home and my mother said if you're gonna stay here, you're gonna have to go back to school. So I said, okay, so I went back to school that same semester all over again.

It's very difficult to believe but whenever I got two weeks before my final exam, I came back home. She says oh, no, not I said mother. I want to quit school. She said you can't quit school. I said I want to join the Navy.

She said let me talk to you daddy. And so off I went and I joined the Navy 17 years of age. I went into the Navy and I found out you had to do some strange things there. I found out you had to smoke but I was already smoking, you know I'll pack and a half of those twice as many filters any other leading brand and I was already saying curse words.

I'd already picked that up and I used to stand in front of a mirror and practice the articulating of those words. I'd try to say them and I'd walk up to my friends and I'd say one of those words to him, you know.

And they'd look at me just like I'd nuts, you know. And I tried to use them because I wanted to be a man and I want to be accepted by everybody. I was willing to do anything just right after I was 17 years of age I went overseas and came back over there.

Of course, you know those of you been the military a bottle of beer for a dime. You can get a fifth of liquor for a dollar and a quarter a bar. Soap or chewing gum or anything like this champagne for a dollar dollar and a quarter a bottle and in six months period of time I consumed over seven hundred and fifty dollars worth of alcoholic beverages.

I came back on an attack aircraft carrier and I was strapped to a bed. As I lay there every morning a doctor came in and gave me a little bottle of liquor for medicinal purposes. And one day he sat down with me and he said son, you're a man now.

He said we can't follow you around ever where you go said you're in the service. He said but I'm gonna tell you something. So if you continue drinking like you're doing he said there's gonna come a time in your life.

You're not gonna ever be able to quit now. That scared me because immediately I related back to an incident. Where I'd done something wrong and my mother says come here and I walked to the window and she pulled back the curtains and there Was a drunk man going down the street.

She said you see him. I said, yes, ma 'am. She says he's a Christian and if you're not careful you grow up. That scared me to death when this guy told me I was Gonna get on liquor for rest of my life.

I equated it with a Christian and I figured man I don't want to be a Christian, you know. And listen, I didn't know anything about being a Christian and it scared me to death. So I didn't drink anything as long as I was strapped down there and on that ship.

I came back into Jacksonville, Florida. Met a strange young man. I'll just simply call him by the name. We called him his name was Mouse and Mouse was a very sinister character and Mouse said listen. He said, you know, we need a lot of money.

He said we going out here and we were starting to take pills by the end of smoking pot taking pills. I'm talking about things. Drink minutes after shave lotion vitalis hair tonic Bay rum sterno can heat break fluid if it had an alcohol base.

Just about anything I could get in strain. I'd take it and drink it and. By then I began smoking pot. I went to a tea party with him one time and he introduced me to pot and then I began to pop pills.

Saffron all equinox milltown methadrine you name them. I've had them and I began to do this. He said listen man, it's costing money. And he said you'll make some money. I said, yeah, I said, how are you gonna do it?

He said Willis. He said what we do said we've got to get some girls to work for us. I said get some girls to do what I didn't have a business, you know. He says well, we get some girls to work for. I said, what do you mean?

He said what prostitution? So I said man, can you can we do it and get away with it? He said sure no trouble at all. So we went out and we got 50 girls. These girls work for us in hotels in Atlanta, Georgia Jacksonville, Florida, Miami, Florida.

These girls had a minimum of two hundred dollars per night that they had to bring in. I began making between eight and ten thousand dollars a week. I have 250 shirts 150 suits 12 pair of shoes two cars.

I had the whole top floor to a hotel in Jacksonville, Florida, and I was just about to turn 19 years of age. Well, I began to move around the country and I began to run with a group of guys and I came back to my hometown in Nashville, Tennessee.

And I met a group of fellows there and while with these fellows I run into a young man who taught me a unique way of opening this knife and so I became known as the fastest blade alive and I got where.

This was my accomplishment in life and I began to carry around with me and One day I was walking down the streets of Nashville, Tennessee. And I was with two friends of mine and just about every friend I have had one doing 15 years for attempted murder.

One has just been shot by a police department. He would had a wanted dead or alive worn out for him. Two friends of mine have been electrocuted and state penitentiaries. Others have done two or three stretches of three years.

But we walked up we saw a young boy there and one of these buddies mine grabbed him by one side and one grabbed him. By the other we was by the Tennessee Theater in downtown, Nashville. There was a little alleyway going back towards the bus station.

And they said cut him and I took and put over 150 stitches looking in his chest. And we walked away and he just laid there against the wall laying on his back and he's actually real no feeling at all.

So I've been again to move around these boys. They were my kind of guys and so they carried pound and a half ball peen hammers with them and one day five of us Were driving across the Shelby Street Bridge, which comes from East Nashville to downtown, Nashville.

Three paratroopers from Fort Campbell, Kentucky in the 11th Airborne were walking across the bridge. We hollered at him and that what did you say? And they hollered back off running and one of my buddies threw the hammer and hit him in the back of the head.

We caught one of these boys and we draped him Over his arms over the side of the bridge and we began to hit him with a flat. I counted every ball 47 times we hit him about the face and about the neck and about the head and shoulders.

With a pound and a half ball peen hammer. His eyes were completely closed. His nose was completely hit him. He hung in a semi-conscious state and after we hit him with a hammer each one of us stepped up and had to hit him with Our fist when I hit that young man with my fist.

It was a sickening thud and the blow went from one side of his face to the other because there was no bone tissue. Whatever to hold him together and he just fell we heard the sirens and and we jumped in the car and they cut us off At the bottom and they took us downtown for fellowship.

You know, they liked it wanted to talk to us a little bit and they're very kind and sweet and understanding about these things. And so we went down with the police officers and stayed there for a while and then we were taken out for identification purposes.

But then another time just to give you some Idea the life that I began to live and the group that I was running around with I was standing in front of the drugstore On 6th and Shelby and there was a Negro man Across the way and had an old army t-shirt on a green t-shirt and this buddy of mine.

I was standing there together. He says I think I'll hit him and I thought he was putting me on and I said, okay get it and so he pulled in a pistol out of his pocket and he fired and The bullet went through a car and it was a man and woman sitting in the car and they were eating ice cream cone and the bullet kind of skinned the man across his chest cut his necktie went over and knocked ice cream comb out of her hand and Spent across the street and hit that man on his left chest just below where it would be even with a heart.

He fell down now. There was a city councilman there that kept his light on all the time on his front porch. And he had the reputation of that anybody in his area could come up to his house anytime of the day or night and talk With him this man began to crawl Towards this house and we ran over and we pulled him back and I put my hand and the next thing that I remembered was the ambulance driver threw me off of him and I ran and dove in the bushes and This boy is still Doing time for that crime.

Well, I had all the money I needed. Well, I had a young boy working for me who was a Roman Catholic and this young boy I paid him $800 a month and he had worked on one day a week. He flew to the different cities to collect the money from these young ladies that we had people looking over them and he flew these different cities to get this money from and So one day he came to me and he said listen.

He said I can't work for you tomorrow said why not he said well, I just can't. And I said, why don't you want moment? I said, I'll give you $1 ,000 a month. He said I just can't work for you anymore. I knew after and I thought man, this is strange $1 ,100 a month and he works four days out of the month.

He doesn't have anything to do and it bothered me for a long time. Well one time I went to a ballgame and He was with me and I noticed a girl came walking by a honey bar and blue eyes Dream, she came walking by and I said, hey, come here Carl and he said we want.

I said, who is that? Yes, I said introduce me to her. He says I don't know what I said, I don't care what her name is. You take me over and introduce me to her. You know my name. He says I don't know who she is.

But the guy who plays third base lives next door to her. He said I know that and so I said, thanks and I went over by third base and this boy. He doesn't know me madam. He's warming up, you know catching balls throw him over first base.

He just planned it smooth over and I said, how's it going? He said all pretty good. How's everything he says. Pretty good. I said what you know, he said that's it. I said what you doing after the game?

He says oh nothing. I don't guess probably going home and I said, listen, I'm treating tonight. I said we'll get some hamburgers and cold drinks and we'll go to your house and see. I figured she'd come drifting by.

And so he said nah, I guess I better not. I said listen, man I'm treat we'll go anywhere you want to go do anything you want to do and we'll go to your house. He said I can't and for the first time in my life.

I was stunned. He said I can't go out with you man said I can't have anything to do. I said why not? He said you're not saved and me see. I thought he knew something I didn't know and I thought that there was somebody after me and so I figured I'd better check up, you know.

So man, it scared me to death and I jumped in my car. I went back to my hotel room. I got in and walked all out and laid on the table scared to death and I thought sure. But you see I found out her life ball team that I went to watch had SJPB on it.

Now as far as I was concerned that meant should jabob or something, you know, I didn't know what it meant. But he meant st. John's Park Baptist Church, and I never been in church in my life. I didn't know what they were doing out there.

I mean, I knew about ballgames, you know, so I watched this. I called this girl and I said listen, I told her I was she says I know who you are. So I thought well the reputation has preceded me, you know, she's she's aware that make it even easier and I thought right.

So well, listen, why don't you and I make the scene? I said we'll go somewhere and she said no I can't go out with you. I said listen, you name it. We'll do it. I said, you know anything you want you want some new clothes you want new coat your new car and she says I can't go Out with you.

I said why not? She said you're not saved and I thought man Here's two people that told me something so I hung up and man I stood there and I shook for another 30 minutes. I was scared to death. I lived in constant fear of dying.

I had everything money could buy. All I had to do is pick up the phone and I could get anything I wanted night or day and I was scared to death. Well mouse came to me and he said listen, we ought to open a club.

Drug Addiction, Crime, and the First Cracks in His Worldview

So I've been thinking about opening a nightclub in Key West, Florida. So we went down to Key West, Florida. We opened a nightclub there.

I spent.

$8 ,000 cash the next day to supply that place with all the bar fixtures and all the liquor everything and now we cater to every Prostitute we cater to every sexual pervert we cater to every Underground we cater to every Degradated deviated creature that there was an area boy everybody we kept it so dark in there.

You didn't dare get up out of your seat. You'll never find it if you came back. We sold it later on and it is still there the building is still there and it's still being used as a nightclub and One of the larger ones down there.

And so we were moving in this and one time mouse come to me said we're going to a party and I want you to go. So we went over and we'd been popping some pills and everything and he showed me some a joint.

He showed me a eyedropper and a 22 gauge needle and a rubber band everything and I said man I'm not for that stuff. And I said no man. I don't want that stuff. I'm not for it and he gave me my first shot of heroin.

I slipped it underneath my hand, you know, and and I liked it. I really liked it. It was a they didn't tell me you see that after you get hooked. There is no more high after you get hooked on it. You got to have it just to be normal.

They didn't well I could then I began to shoot regularly and my habit cost me a day. For my drug habit, so we opened our club up and we got it moving. So we moved into gambling. We began to have floating gambling things and we'd have card games going on using Mark cards that used to come out of Kansas City.

You could buy them other crates down there. And so we do this and we had everything going and and I was running pretty consistently around ten thousand dollars a week 19 years of age had everything that I saw Carl one day and he came over said I want to talk to you.

And I said what you got on your mind. He said, you know what I said what he said Jesus loves you and I said who I thought he had somebody for me, you know, and I said where does she live? He said no Jesus loves you.

I said who he said Jesus and you know. There's something about the name of Jesus if you've never heard it. You still know you don't want to hear it if you're lost. It's just something about the name of Jesus that does something to a lost man or woman boy girl.

And that name just flew all over me and I knew I didn't want to hear it and I said man I don't care for that stuff. I don't even want to hear about it. He said no Jesus loves you and he was grinning and I said if you say that to me again I said I'm gonna hit you as hard as I can and I said, I'll tear your head off your shoulders.

He said Jesus loves you and I caught him. And he fell back and he looked up at me and he says yeah, he loves you. So I began calling this girl. I called that girl every day at four o 'clock for six months every day I call up and just say no and hang up no and hang up just no and hang up.

Well, I found out like some of you guys did if I could get mama on my side I could get her say so I began to send her mother flowers and candy and I sent her everything and I could just hear that Mother, you know why he seemed like such a nice young man.

Why here I was a drug addict running prostitutes and gambling and everything else and just because she's getting a few gifts. She was telling her precious daughter. He seems like such a nice young man.

I don't see why you don't go out and I knew that she's working with me, you know so I kept calling this girl and calling this girl and calling this girl and then finally They got me. Carl can't tell me says why don't you ever read your Bible?

I said man I know more about the Bible than you do. I said man, I want you ever read to see. I didn't have one. He said won't you ever read it? I said I said, I'm not afraid to read said yes. You are and so he had an Old Testament.

He said here you are read it. So he handed it to me. I said where you only started said I don't care wherever you want to start and he kept on bugging me about it. I got into Isaiah and he came to me one day and he says where are you?

I said what difference it makes so where are you? What's it to you? He said come on. Tell me Where you reading? I said I'm in the book of Isaiah said where you in fifth third chapter. I said, yeah. He said well, if you don't say Jesus there, you're not gonna see him said you don't have to read anymore.

And I said man, there's no Jesus in there and I read it to him. I said Jesus not in there and I closed my Bible. I said great. I said see I've caught you. He said no, he said but it talks about him. It doesn't call his name, but it talks about him.

I said man, you're out of your mind. And so they found out that they weren't getting anywhere with me and so I called this girl one time. She said I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. She says if you'll go to church with me, she says I'll go out with you man.

I never been church my life. I knew what they did, you know, I'd heard about it. So I said, well, let me call you back. So I called this girl up and I said listen, I'll go with you. But I can only go on Wednesday.

She said all right be in my house and she told me when I got to her house 20 minutes before church time. She lived seven minutes from the church. So I walked up there, you know. And boy, I was decked out hair greased back and I had 21 inch drapes and 16 inch pegs.

You know and had a sport coat black and pink looked like somebody dipped her hand in pink paint and did like that at it. And boy, I was all decked out and you know, I come strolling in there didn't have sense enough to ring the doorbell.

I'm beating on the door, you know. Her mother came door and opened the door and says won't you come in and I walked in. Few minutes later this good-looking dream came walking through the door and she just came floating in.

She had a big black book on her arm. She walked over to me and spoke and she said would you like to sit on the couch?

Yeah.

So we sat on the couch and she opened her Bible she read me two chapters from the Bible. I don't know what she read. She didn't say would you are would you like to she said, let's pray. She bowed her head and she began to pray.

She got up walked the door and she says it's time to go. We went out and I got in the car and I thought I'd impress her with the pipes, you know. So I let him rack off real good. I let those things rack off.

I look she's staying outside the car and I said aren't you going and she said yes. Open the door. So I reached open open door. She says you come around here and open it up. I said when did it set in she said what I said paralysis.

What's the matter with you? So I went around and open the door and she got in, you know, and I slammed that door closed and We got in we went to church and like most typical bad bitch, you know, I wasn't a bad shit.