One hundred years ago, Europe was home to the majority of the world’s Jewish population. In 1933 the American Jewish Yearbook placed the total Jewish population of Europe at about 9.5 million. ‘This number represented more than 60 percent of the world’s Jewish population, which was estimated at 15.3 million.’[1] Today there are about 1,456,000 out of a total world population of 13,428,300,[2] meaning that only 11 percent of world Jewry lives in all of Europe.

In 1902, according to A. E. Thompson, European (including British) missions to the Jews had a combined income of $568,550 US.[3] This is equivalent to 86 million dollars today, using calculations based on the nominal GDP per capita then and now.[4] However one might calculate it, missions to the Jewish people were well funded then as compared to now. They were in their heyday, and for good reason. Jewish people were coming to their Messiah.

The Haskalah had triumphed. Jews were rapidly integrating, even assimilating into European life. Moses Mendelssohn’s grandson Felix had now been born, converted and died as a devout follower of Yeshua, and he was not the only one. Zionism had emerged as a vision, but few Jews were so captivated as to emigrate to Palestine, even after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. The world was full of possibilities – even the previously ultimate impossibility – conversion to Christianity.

By the mid-nineteenth century, a rapidly increasing number of Jews were becoming believers in Jesus as the Son of God and their personal Messiah. Among them were such names as Jakób Jocz, Leon Levison, Ernest Lloyd, Hugh Montefiore, Shabtai Rohold and more. While none of these men would personally experience the Shoah, they left behind a world that did. That world included whole communities, such as that of Kishinev, Romania (now Chişinău, Moldova) who died along with the rest of the city’s Jewish inhabitants at the hands of the Nazis.[5] It is that world to which we currently turn our attention.

I. What was the Hebrew Christian Shoah?

The Returning Remnant

By the 1930s, more than 200,000 European Jews were embracing Jesus as their Messiah. Glaser calculates that “the number of Jews who became Christians during the first third of the 20th century may have been upwards of 230,000—far more than the 224,000 Jews during the 19th century mentioned by Rev. J. F. de le Roi for the entire 20th century.”[6] In 1936 Hugh Schonfield wrote that ‘when it became possible to gather reliable statistics it was found that 97,000 Jews had joined the Church in Hungary, 17,000 in Austria, 35,000 in Poland, 60,000 in Russia… .’[7]

Most Jews turning to Christianity were happy to join with the churches of their domains. Others had a desire to somehow maintain their Jewish culture and traditions in the no-man’s-land between the Christian and Jewish worlds.

According to a Reuter News agency report from Warsaw in a September 1929 edition of the Times, a new Jewish sect has been recently established on the eastern border of Poland, near Vilna, with headquarters at Kucewicze; its adherents, says the report, number 15,000. The Times reported ‘This association has decided to form a Jewish Church, recognising the deity of Jesus of Nazareth and studying the New Testament, still adhering, however, to general rabbinic regulations.’[8]

Sadly, however, the church was often inclined only to accept Jewish believers on its own terms. Jews were expected to become Christians upon accepting Yeshua as their Saviour. Their own Jewish identity was often suspect.[9]

If it is true that over 200,000 Jews in Europe were believers in Yeshua prior to the Shoah, they then comprised two percent of the Jewish population. Such believers were far from being a mere oddity. “By the time the Nazis moved into Sudetenland, and then into the rest of the country in 1938 [Czechoslovakia], there were large numbers of Jews who had publicly professed faith in Jesus in baptism and open church membership.”[10] This was the Hebrew Christian Shoah: After World War Two, organised Hebrew Christianity no longer existed in Europe.

II. Pre-Shoah Jewish Believers in Yeshua and their Soteriology

A.                 Conformist Hebrew Christianity

Various streams of Jewish Christianity were present in Europe. Names of some notable Hebrew Christians still resonate with us today – Felix Mendelssohn, Johann Strauss, Gustav Mahler, to mention only a few. Some, such as Mahler were suspected of having converted simply to advance their careers and status in society. Others, such as Mendelssohn, had a Christian faith that seems to have been a matter of heartfelt devotion.

The more assimilated Jewish Believers in Yeshua were happy to shed whatever customs and unacceptable vestiges of their Jewish heritage necessary to conform and achieve full acceptance into the church and Christian society. No matter! They could not escape their Jewish identity. History demonstrates that they remained identifiable as Jews, with or without their consent. To this day biographies by both Jews and Gentiles find it necessary to ferret out these believers’ sometimes hidden Jewish pasts.   This is not necessarily bad. Recorded for posterity are the great achievements of our Jewish believer forerunners. “…Chinese Christians will ever remember, with gratitude to God, the great scholar [Bishop Schereschewsky (1831-1906)], who out of weakness was made strong – who laid so well and so truly the foundations of the Bible in their greatest vernacular, and in the more popular form of their written language.”[11]

In Europe however, this assimilating trend was far from problem free. In one sense, missions to the Jewish people and the wider Jewish Christian community were beneficiaries. Willy-nilly, the missions could report on significant numbers of converts, and willy-nilly the community of Jewish Believers in Yeshua was growing in numbers. These converts however, were not necessarily a benefit to either the one or the other. In addition, the Jewish community could see what was happening. Assimilation offered benefits. The alienation from the larger Jewish community sometimes made those benefits a prerequisite for survival. Missions were damned if they did and damned if they did not help the convert. Thus, they were criticised on both fronts, as John Fieldsend noted a number of years ago:

Organisations involved in Christian outreach were constantly faced with the accusations from the Jewish leadership of ‘buying converts’ if they included material relief in their outreach programme, or being more concerned about souls than about human needs if they did not. In that situation the Christian workers also constantly needed to discern the motives behind frequent requests for baptism.[12]

In reality, sincere Jewish believers in Yeshua were by far more the norm than the exception.

August Neander (née David Mendel, 1789-1850) seems characteristic of many Jewish Believers in Yeshua in the era before the Shoah. In his commentary on Philippians he stresses with heartfelt tones that Yeshua must be believed in as more than a Messiah “after the Jewish conception, a carnal Messiah with carnal hopes.”[13] We know the tendency today for people to believe that Yeshua may be the Messiah, but not a personal Saviour. On the issue of “Law versus Grace” Neander would say that indeed, true faith requires that we “make the decision, between a carnal or a spiritual Messiah; between a righteousness grounded on faith in the Redeemer alone, or in the Law and its works.”[14] In discussing the issue of law versus grace in such classical terms, Neander reveals his frame of reference. He writes from the Christian camp. This is further revealed in his use of the third person when referring to the Jewish people.[15]

Did his new-found Christian identity negate or overwhelm his Jewish one? What effect did it have upon his reading of the Scriptures? Granted, he wrote as a Christian to Christians, and yet may have kept a deep, private Jewish consciousness, but if so, it is not evident in his Soteriology which does not differ in the way it is expressed from that of Christian theologians in general.

B.                 Identifiable Hebrew Christianity

There is little doubt that the majority of Jewish Believers in Yeshua were completely in line with their new faith in terms of their Soteriology. Mark Levy, writing evidently as a Catholic Jew of the Church of England, said in 1911: “In England and the United States there are over seven hundred ministers of the Gospel of full or half-Jewish birth, and thousands of communicants.”[16] It would be beyond strange if these ministers shared an un-mentioned common Soteriology that was different from that of other ministers of the Gospel.

Many Hebrew Christians openly identified themselves with their Jewish people. One of the most famous is Benjamin Disraeli. Politician and novelist, he was a keen thinker who anticipated the final conversion of the Jews and expressed the hope that “they will accept the whole of their religion instead of only the half of it, as they gradually grow more familiar with the true history and character of the New Testament.”’[17] We cannot argue that this is a distinguishably “Jewish” feature in his theology. Along with much of British Protestantism of the day, he looked forward to the national redemption of Israel. This is where we begin to pick up a thread in a distinctive tendency among Jewish believers in Yeshua to hope that “all Israel” might be saved.

Another, later Jewish believer (Sir Leon Levison, 1881-1936) is described by his son: “Once he had met in a Jew the new light and love born of faith in Christ he would want to respond as Philip to the Ethiopian, ‘What hinders you from being baptised?’ “[18] Here again, an interesting thread appears. It is as a Jewish universalism, a consciousness of belonging to the body of Messiah more than to a specific denomination. It is a love for his own (Jewish) people and a concern for their spiritual growth apart from the delaying apparatus of church policies. It is a hint of a Soteriology that views Baptism as part and parcel of the process whereby one becomes a follower of Jesus.

Levison “also held, with St Paul, that God has not abandoned Israel; and that it might well be His purpose to gather her again as a nation and to give her a new role in His universal plan…  .“[19] Here again is that thread – the thread of hope for Israel’s future.

Writing in his book upon the Apostle Paul, Levison demonstrated his view of Judaism as key to God’s plan of salvation for the world. He was keen to emphasise that Judaism is rightly a missionary religion: “St. Paul, like his Master, reverted to or rather took up Judaism as it was known to Abraham and the prophets, looking upon it as a religion which was founded and had its being on a missionary basis.”[20]

Jewish believers in Yeshua were not alone in this hope. Christians in Europe and abroad believed in the centrality of Jewish Evangelism for soteriological and missiological reasons. As far afield as Canada pastors believed like Ostrom that “the Jew is the center of the divine purposes… . The Jew is the key of the world’s missionary campaign.”[21]

It is probably fair to say that the middle-of-the-road Hebrew Christian was most allied with the missions movement to the Jewish people in general. The father of missions to the Jews in the United Kingdom and the United States and in New York City in particular was Joseph Samuel Christian Frederick Frey. Frey left England in 1816 and set sail for the United States after beginning the London Jews Society.[22] The London Jews Society would grow under Anglican patronage to become the largest of all missions to the Jews worldwide prior to the Shoah. In turn, “the missions in New York City evidently modelled their works on the British and Scottish missions.”[23] The same was true in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg, where Jews and Missions to the Jews were primarily situated in those years.[24]

C.                 Messianic Judaism

Some Jewish Believers in Yeshua, in the minority as today, desired to assert and maintain their heritage and calling as Jews as part and parcel of their faith in Messiah Yeshua. In this they were not necessarily distinct from all in the first category, but they were also keen to maintain a Jewish lifestyle, and in association with one another. It was they who first adopted the term “Messianic Judaism,” appropriating it from general Jewish parlance. In some ways, such Jewish Believers in Yeshua are the most outspoken in the writings that they have left behind for us to read.

1.                  Lichtenstein (1825-1909)

Rabbi Ignatz (Isaac) Lichtenstein[25] is described by Bernstein as ‘one of the most remarkable converts to Christianity in the nineteenth century.’[26] As he began to incorporate his faith in Yeshua into his preaching, he was eventually dismissed from his synagogue. He was never baptised. Forthright in his identity as a Jew, lived out his life as a preacher of the Gospel in Pesht.[27]

His was a practical, Pauline heart-cry: “I desire that the Jew should rouse himself from his mental sloth, his apathy, and, like Moses, take his place in the gate of the camp, and shout with clear, ringing voice, ‘Come to me all who are on the Lord’s side!’ . . .  “Here is the patience of the saints, here are they who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. (Revelation xiv. 12.)”[28]

His was an appeal to the Jewish people from within the camp: “And will Israel cease to be a nation when at last he recognises in Christ his Redeemer and Messiah-King? Shall we then be absorbed in Christendom, and will there be an end to our God-consecrated people? By no means; Israel will then, at last, attain the position to which he is called of God. At the head of the nations, as the first-born, the people of Salvation, from whom the Saviour of all peoples has arisen.” [29]

As a precursor to some streams of thought once again being heard among Messianic Jews, Lichtenstein cries that “Israel, as the elect people, the everlasting witness to the peoples, cannot, and ought not, to disappear in the tumult of the nations. For this we have a sure word, a divine pledge, ‘For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.’ (Malachi iii. 6.)”[30]

Lichtenstein has a vision for all Israel. For him, the salvation of the individual and of the Jewish people are not as distinct as among other Jewish followers of Yeshua. There is the dream, not necessarily merely eschatological, that Israel would recognise his Messiah. He practically shouts from the pages: “Israel! Arise, shine! Thy Light is come.”[31]

2.                  Rabinowitz (1837-1899)

Another Lichtenstein, from a Chassidic background (Jechiel Zebi Herschensohn-Lichtenstein), also played a role in our history. He would become a prolific and prominent worker for the salvation of his Jewish people. “Sometime near or after 1855, he met Joseph Rabinowitz and gave him a New Testament; however, according to Landsman  ‘at the time [Rabinowitz] did not consider it seriously.’ “ [32]

Nevertheless, the day came when Rabinowitz did come to faith. His famous work in Chişinău clearly had an evangelistic thrust to it.  A Bible society historian recounts that “BFBS [British and Foreign Bible Society] publications contain a number of narratives and personal testimonials. An early representative of the ‘genre’ in relation to the Jews appeared in a March, 1885, article titled ‘The religious Awakening Among the Jews.’ One M. Rabinowitch is identified as a leader of a Southern Russian movement springing up among the Jews… . Caught up in this movement, an insurance agent, who also taught Jewish children, ‘Respectfully request[ed] a Hebrew Old Testament and also a New Testament in Hebrew, with the German and Polish translation.’ With these and other tools, he assures the BFBS, ‘I will unveil the new hidden light gradually to my scholars, and may the Eternal One in Heaven be with the Society and its supporters.’ ”[33]

Once again, the thread of national aspirations for the salvation of Israel appear, this time in Rabinowitz’s ten articles of faith: “But now the times of the Gentiles have been fulfilled (Luke 21:24), so that we descendants of Abraham may all come and be blessed through faith in the Lord Jesus the Messiah… . Thus the whole of Israel shares in the eternal salvation, and Jerusalem, our holy city, and the throne of David will be raised up once more and endure for ever (cf. Rom. 11).”[34]

In his book on Rabinowitz, Kjær-Hansen has demonstrated the connection between Rabinowitz’s articles of faith and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (BCP). In this regard comparison of the two serves to highlight Rabinowitz’s distinct emphases.  The BCP in its Hebrew translation says “Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins.“[35] This is a typical emphasis of Reformed and Evangelical theology – works follow after faith; an unqualified repudiation of the value of works. It is the emphasis of sola fide. Here is where Rabinowitz diverges somewhat, removing the sequential nature of the relationship. He writes that “Living and true faith is known by good works, as the tree is known by its fruit. In the Messiah good works are well-pleasing to God, but they cannot put away sins or justify us or prevent God’s judgement.”[36] His doctrine is sound and orthodox, but there is a distinctly Jewish perspective on the relationship between faith and works that refuses to minimise the importance of works, or he would have said, mitzvot.

What can be said about Jewish Believers in Yeshua prior to the Shoah? In the early twentieth century a lot of the leading lights of the nineteenth century were no longer to be seen. Not only the Shoah but also the First World War, the pogroms, the Bolshevik Revolution and more would make the years between the nineteenth century and the post-Shoah world quite distinct.

One thing that would be common to all Jewish Believers in Yeshua prior to the holocaust would be a desire for a wide acceptance of Yeshua among their nation. A familiar theme of personal and corporate salvation in the booklet of Songs of Salvation concludes, directing our eyes to “Yeshua Messiah . . .  Our Righteousness . . .  To bring us to everlasting life, In Messiah our righteousness and our Redeemer, Amen. He is our Messiah. He is our korban – our offering. [37]

Were Jewish Believers in Yeshua wrestling with the issue of whether or not a conscious recognition of Yeshua as Messiah and Saviour is required for salvation? Was salvation in part a salvation from being the subject of the “Jewish Problem?” This is more addressed in the literature of the missions and churches than the literature of the Jewish Believers in Yeshua.

III. Post-Shoah Jewish Believers in Yeshua and their Soteriology

A.                 The Christian Response

What was the soteriological legacy of the Shoah? Jewish Believers in Yeshua have left us hints of a distinct hope for the salvation of all Israel. They have addressed the issue of faith and works sometimes in their own terms. The Shoah brought to a climax the horrific global anti-Semitism that gave rise to violence against Jews both in Europe, Russia and the Levant, while the rest of the world closed its doors making flight from our dreadful fate well nigh impossible. The world’s mask was torn off by its own depravity, leaving future generations to interpret what it all meant.

The effects of the Shoah upon the church’s Soteriology are evident. Dual-covenant theology has become increasingly accepted, as a shamed church has turned from direct evangelism to reliance upon dialogue as a replacement for evangelism. For the majority of the church – not the Evangelical church so much – Jews are deemed to have their own way of salvation without an acknowledgement of Yeshua.

This was not the universal effect of the Shoah however. As Fieldsend states, “we have to say that as far as the missionary societies and churches involved were concerned, they did their best to take it up where they had inevitably to lay it down during the war . . .  ‘half of world Jewry now lived in the USA and another third behind the closed doors of the USSR.’ “[38] Nevertheless, these societies were undercut by widely changing currents of thought within the Christian church as a whole. Within a few decades once mighty societies as the LSPCJ and the London Society would be a shell of their former selves, without the patronage from influential figures that they once enjoyed. Many missions would close or merge with others to stave off the inevitable. Jewish evangelism would increasingly become an unpopular cause.

B.                 How did Jewish Believers in Yeshua fit into all of this?

Jacob Jocz (1906-1983) was a third generation Jewish believer in Yeshua. Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, he became best known after moving to Canada to head Toronto’s Nathanael Institute in 1957. Prior to the Shoah the Institute had quite arguably become “the most influential centre of Hebrew Christian life in Toronto after the First World War.”[39] He was not in Toronto long before the Anglican Church’s dislike for the Institute’s evangelical approach caused it to be renamed “The Christian-Jewish Dialogue of the Anglican Church of Canada.”[40] Jocz left. So did the rest of the Jewish Believers in Yeshua community associated with it.

Jocz did not view this as a minor aberration by the church. Rather, he “saw the Jewish people as crucial to the task of world evangelisation, saying that ‘the task of [world] evangelisation hinges on Jewish missions.’ “[41] Thus he could not live with the Church’s desire for dialogue and rather took up an academic post.

Jewish believers typically eschewed any idea of a dual covenant. Ernest Lloyd (1913-2010), like Jocz a past president of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance, was far from being alone in his views. Moore accurately captures Lloyd’s unique way of expressing his views: “He labels as ‘diabolical’ any school of eschatology that teaches there are different ways of salvation for Jews and gentiles (sic). Though he believes there may be a great spiritual awakening among the Jewish people before Christ returns.”[42]

Conclusion

Jewish Believers in Yeshua were sobered by the war, but their faith was not destroyed. Rachmiel Frydland (1919-1985) wrote concerning the months following his emergence from hiding, having survived the Shoah:

The Polish Evangelical Baptist Church invited me to work for them as an itinerant preacher. This was of great help to my spiritual and physical rehabilitation. It brought me in contact with many pastors and from them I heard the stories of other Hebrew Christians who had died and remained faithful to the very end. Some of these families were well known to me. When the time came for them to face death, they prepared their children, partook of the Lord’s Supper with them, told them not to be afraid and that the pain would last only a few minutes.[43]

Frydland became one of the few surviving bridges between the old world and the new,

…the majority of the post-war leaders in Jewish work were those who heard the gospel in Europe and were able to survive. Great missionary scholars were produced, like Jakób Jocz, Rachmiel Frydland and Victor Buksbazen of Poland. Others, like Leon Rosenberg of Russia and Poland, began new mission organizations in America.[44]

These are those “of whom the world was not worthy.”[45]

Bibliography

Bernstein, A. Jewish Witnesses for Christ. Jerusalem: Keren Ahvah Meshihit, 1999.

BFBS. “The Religious Awakening Among the Jews.” The Monthly Reporter of the BFBS 14, no. 3 (1885): 33-34.

DellaPergola, Sergio. World Jewish Population, 2010. Storrs, CT, 2010.

Fieldsend, John. “Post Sho’ah Witness.” Stuttgart: LCJE, 1996.

Frydland, Rachmiel. When Being Jewish Was a Crime. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978.

Gartenhaus, Jacob. Famous Hebrew Christians. Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Book, 1979.

Glaser, Mitchell Leslie. “A Survey of Missions to the Jews in Continental Europe 1900 – 1950,” 1998.

___. “A Survey of the History of Missions to the Jews in New York City 1900 – 1930.” New York, NY: LCJE, 1994.

Greenspoon, Leonard Jay. “Bringing home the Gospel; Yiddish Bibles, Bible Societies, and the Jews.” Edited by Leonard Jay Greenspoon. Omaha, NEB: Creighton University Press, 1998.

“Jewish Population of Europe Before the Holocaust Map.” http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/jewpop.html.

Jocz, Jacob. “Jewish Missions in Relation to Universalism.” In One Race, One Gospel, One Task. Edited by Carl F. Henry and W. Stanley Mooneyham. Minneapolis: World Wide Press, 1967.

Kjær-Hansen, Kai. Joseph Rabinowitz and the Messianic Movement. Edinburgh: The Handsel Press, 1995.

Levison, Frederick. Christian and Jew: The Life of Leon Levison 1881-1936. Edinburgh: The Pentland Press, 1989.

Levison, Leon. Life of St. Paul. London: Marshall Brothers, 1911.

Lichtenstein, Ignatz, and Mrs Baron. An Appeal to the Jewish People. London: Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel.

___. Two Letters; or, What I Really Wish. London: Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel, 1887.

Littell, John Stockton. Some Great Christian Jews. Keene, NH: John S. Littell, 1913.

McCaul, Alexander, trans. The Book of Common Prayer According to the Use of the United Church of England and Ireland. Translated into Hebrew. London: LSPCJ, 1836.

“Measuring Worth – Measures of worth, inflation rates, saving calculator, relative value, worth of a dollar, worth of a pound, purchasing power, gold prices, GDP, history of wages, average wage.” http://www.measuringworth.com/index.php.

Moore, Mike. The Importance of Being Ernest: A Jewish Life Spent in Christian Mission. Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2003.

Neander, Augustus. “The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians.” In The Scriptural Expositions of Dr Augustus Neander. Translated by H. C. Conant. New York: Lewis Colby and Company, 1853.

___. “The General Epistle of James, Practically Explained.” In The Scriptural Expositions of Dr Augustus Neander. Translated by H. C. Conant. New York: Lewis Colby and Company, 1853.

Nessim, Daniel F Jonathan. “The History of Jewish Believers in the Canadian Protestant Church, 1759-1996.” Vancouver: Regent College, 1996.

Ostrom, Henry. The Jew and his Mission. Chicago: Bible Institute Colportage Assn., 1923.

Quiñónez, Jorge. “An Introductory Bio-Bibliography to Jechiel Zebi Herschensohn-Lichtenstein (1831-1912).” Kesher, no. 15 (2002): 78-89.

Schonfield, Hugh J. The History of Jewish Christianity. London: Duckworth, 1936.

Thompson, A. E. A Century of Jewish Missions. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1902.

ישפה-עמנואל. שירי הישוע. Warsaw: Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel, 1892.

 

 

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[1] “Jewish Population of Europe Before the Holocaust Map,” http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/jewpop.html.

[2] Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2010 (Storrs, CT, 2010), 60.

[3] A. E. Thompson, A Century of Jewish Missions (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1902), 280-281.

[4] “Measuring Worth – Measures of worth, inflation rates, saving calculator, relative value, worth of a dollar, worth of a pound, purchasing power, gold prices, GDP, history of wages, average wage, http://www.measuringworth.com/index.php.

[5] Kjær-Hansen documents that after the war there was only one surviving Hebrew Christian in Kishinev. Kai Kjær-Hansen, Joseph Rabinowitz and the Messianic Movement (Edinburgh: The Handsel Press, 1995), 229.

[6] Mitchell Leslie Glaser, “A Survey of Missions to the Jews in Continental Europe 1900 – 1950,” 1998: 3, 467.

[7] Hugh J. Schonfield, The History of Jewish Christianity (London: Duckworth, 1936), 238.

[8] John Fieldsend, “Post Sho’ah Witness,”4.

[9] Ibid. There is a fascinating article in “Immanuel’s Witness,” the organ of the Barbican Mission, of March 1937 entitled “Jews Want a Church.” It is recorded that through the witness of Mr. Sameielevici, a Jewish headmaster who had become a believer in Jesus, two hundred of the best Jewish families in Bucharest were prepared to become Christians. They requested Patriarch Miron Christea to administer baptism to them, but at the same time stating that they wished to build their own church and form a separate congregation. The article goes on to describe the opposition that this request aroused and the stark refusal even to consider this request. The quandary new believers found themselves in is well described. “If he comes and desires to be absorbed into the church, then it is said that he has an ulterior motive: either social position or political gain. If he desires to form a church of his own and remain a separate unit, then he must be prevented because of the formation of a new sect.” The fact that this group requested baptism from the Patriarch was precisely because they did not wish to be seen as a new sect bore no weight in their argument. The article goes on the (sic) record another mass movement when 97,000 Jewish in Hungary became Christians, though it would seem that at that stage they joined the existing churches and were absorbed into the mainstream Christian community and lost their Jewish identity.” Ibid., 4.

[10] Ibid., 3.

[11] A Bernstein, Jewish Witnesses for Christ (Jerusalem: Keren Ahvah Meshihit, 1999), 464-465.

[12] John Fieldsend, “Post Sho’ah Witness” (Stuttgart: LCJE, 1996), 2.

[13] Augustus Neander, “The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians,” in The Scriptural Expositions of Dr Augustus Neander, trans. H. C. Conant (New York: Lewis Colby and Company, 1853), 59, 107.

[14] Ibid: 109.

[15] Augustus Neander, “The General Epistle of James, Practically Explained,” in The Scriptural Expositions of Dr Augustus Neander, trans. H. C. Conant (New York: Lewis Colby and Company, 1853).

[16] John Stockton Littell, Some Great Christian Jews (Keene, NH: John S. Littell, 1913), 30.

[17] Jacob Gartenhaus, Famous Hebrew Christians (Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Book House, 1979), 74.

[18] Frederick Levison, Christian and Jew: The Life of Leon Levison 1881-1936 (Edinburgh: The Pentland Press, 1989), 30.

[19] Ibid., 96.

[20] Leon Levison, Life of St. Paul, 98.

[21] Henry Ostrom, The Jew and his Mission (Chicago: Bible Institute Colportage Assn., 1923), 143.

[22] Ibid., 4.

[23] Mitchell Glaser, “A Survey of the History of Missions to the Jews in New York City 1900 – 1930” (New York, NY: LCJE, 1994): 9.

[24] Daniel F Jonathan Nessim, “The History of Jewish Believers in the Canadian Protestant Church, 1759-1996” (Vancouver: Regent College, 1996).

[25] Not to be confused with John Leopold Lichtenstein (1813-1882) of Hechingen, Germany or Yechiel Zebi Herschensohn-Lichtenstein (1831-1912) of Jassy, Romania and other Lichtensteins!

[26] A Bernstein, Jewish Witnesses for Christ, 338.

[27] Ibid., 339.

[28] Ignatz Lichtenstein and Mrs Baron, Two Letters; or, What I Really Wish (London: Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel, 1887): 27.

[29] {Please_Select_Citation_From_Mendeley_Desktop}Ignatz Lichtenstein and Mrs Baron, An Appeal to the Jewish People (London: Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel): 21.

[30] Ignatz Lichtenstein and Mrs Baron, Two Letters; or, What I Really Wish, 25.

[31] Ibid., p. 32.

[32] Jorge Quiñónez, “An Introductory Bio-Bibliography to Jechiel Zebi Herschensohn-Lichtenstein (1831-1912),” Kesher, no. 15 (2002): 80.

[33] Leonard Jay Greenspoon, “Bringing home the Gospel; Yiddish Bibles, Bible Societies, and the Jews,” ed. Leonard Jay Greenspoon (Omaha, NEB: Creighton University Press, 1998), 297, {Please_Select_Citation_From_Mendeley_Desktop}citing BFBS, “The Religious Awakening Among the Jews,” The Monthly Reporter of the BFBS 14, no. 3 (1885): 33-34.

[34] Kai Kjær-Hansen, Joseph Rabinowitz and the Messianic Movement (Edinburgh: The Handsel Press, 1995), 96.

[35] Alexander McCaul, trans., The Book of Common Prayer According to the Use of the United Church of England and Ireland. Translated into Hebrew. (London: LSPCJ, 1836): 134.

[36] Ibid., 100.

[37](Warsaw: Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel, 1892): 24

[38] John Fieldsend, “Post Sho’ah Witness,” 6.

[39] Daniel F Jonathan Nessim, “The History of Jewish Believers in the Canadian Protestant Church, 1759-1996,” 113.

[40] Ibid., 144.

[41] Jacob Jocz, “Jewish Missions in Relation to Universalism,” in One Race, One Gospel, One Task, ed. Carl F. Henry and W. Stanley Mooneyham (Minneapolis: World Wide Press, 1967), 188.

[42] Mike Moore, The Importance of Being Ernest: A Jewish Life Spent in Christian Mission (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2003), 53.

[43] Rachmiel Frydland, When Being Jewish Was a Crime (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978), 142-143.

[44] Mitchell Leslie Glaser, “A Survey of the History of Missions to the Jews in New York City 1900 – 1930,” 464.

[45] Hebrews 11:38.