Searching for Truth, He Found Judaism and Never Looked Back

Pinchas Buler was born in a small Swiss town to a respected Catholic family. His father was the honorary president and head of the local Catholic community, widely admired and influential. But Pinchas’s early childhood was marked by deep loss. At age four and a half, he lost his mother. A year later, his father remarried a woman who gave him an ultimatum: “Either me or the children.” As a result, Pinchas and his older sister were sent away.

His sister was placed in a convent. Pinchas, then known as Philip, was enrolled in a Catholic seminary where he studied the New Testament under priests and church leaders. But even as a child, he began to question what he was taught.

"At thirteen and a half, I staged my first rebellion," Pinchas recalls. “Catholicism doesn’t welcome new ideas. They see questions as heresy. I’ve always loved etymology, the meaning of words and their roots but I didn’t find that in their teachings. For example, I once asked, ‘How could Mary give birth and still be a virgin?’ The answer was just, ‘Believe. It’s a mystery.’ It didn’t make sense.”

In another instance, a priest declared that they were learning from “the book of truth.” Pinchas responded, “But isn’t this book originally written in Hebrew?” The priest admitted it was. “And it’s been translated again and again into other languages, right?” Again, the priest agreed. “So,” Pinchas continued, “it must have changed a lot since the original.” The priest became furious and kicked him out of class. “When someone yells instead of answering,” Pinchas said calmly, “it means they don’t have a real answer.”

At 15, Pinchas left school without graduating and turned to culinary studies. But the questions inside him never stopped. He studied philosophy and searched for truth in nature. His sister, who had escaped the convent, became interested in Buddhism, but Pinchas couldn’t accept bowing to statues or mediators. “I didn’t want idolatry, I wanted the real thing,” he says.

He kept searching. He studied Chinese teachings, Tibetan ideas, and then Islam. But he found contradictions there too. “The Quran includes much of the New Testament,” he said, “but with additions from their prophet. Many of the stories didn’t make sense historically.” For example, he found a story claiming that Mary went to the Beit HaMikdash (the Holy Temple) but historically, that Mary had already passed away. When he pointed this out, he was told it was “another Mary with the same story.” The explanation felt like a cover-up.

Eventually, he asked himself: “Who was the first to recognize a Creator?” The answer was clear,,Avraham Avinu (Abraham, our forefather). “But Avraham spoke Hebrew and I didn’t,” he realized. That’s when he decided to learn Hebrew so he could understand the original Torah, in its true form, not through layers of translation.

For years, Pinchas wandered through Switzerland, searching for clarity. At age 33, in 1995, he moved to Israel. “I didn’t plan to become Jewish,” he said. “I just wanted to learn Hebrew.” He enrolled in an ulpan, a Hebrew language school, and began studying.

But something changed. “When I read, ‘And Hashem formed man from the dust of the earth,’ I realized I had found what I’d been seeking all along. The Hebrew language, the Torah and it all clicked. I had finally reached the truth.”