Grace Point! July 2015 | Page 23

Born on a Moshav (farming community) in southern Israel, Avner Valer suffered an extreme episode of psychosis as a teenager. “When I was 18, I took an ecstasy tablet and went crazy,” he recalls. “For two weeks I was like a mad man. I would run into the streets without any clothes. So they put me into the lockdown ward of the local mental hospital.” Avner, whose family is secular, said it was an earlier addiction that helped him cope. “Ever since I learned to read in first grade I was captivated by the words of the Hebrew Bible,” he told ‘Israel today’. “I became obsessed with reading the Scriptures. The only class I went to in high scho