Jewish Christians, or Jewish believers in Jesus as the Messiah, were present in Jewish communities in the early centuries of Christianity. From the 5th to the 18th centuries, Messianic Jewish history shifted from communal narratives to stories of individual Jewish believers becoming part of a predominantly Gentile Christian community. However, a modern revival of Messianic Judaism emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.[1] In the 1880’s, Joseph Rabinowitz established one of the earliest, if not the first, Jewish Christian community.[2] Rabinowitz created the “community of Hebrew Christian believers out of the boundaries of established churches and kept it within the realms of the synagogue.”[3] Rabinowitz had first moved to Israel from Russia in 1882, wanting to be an early immigrant and part of the modern Aliyah movement. He spent time on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the city of Jerusalem, where he had a deep spiritual experience. He carried a copy of the New Testament with him and at some point became a believer in Jesus (Yeshua) the Messiah. He returned to Russia where he was “instrumental in leading many Jewish people to the Lord and establishing congregations of Jewish believers during the last decade of the nineteenth century and up until the First World War.” [4] Messianic Judaism is one of the “candlestick of witnesses to the Messiahship of Jesus.”[5]
[1]
David H. Stern, Messianic Judaism :
A Modern Movement with an Ancient Past (Clarksville, MD:
Messianic Jewish Publishers, 2007), 74.
[2] Owen
Power, Hugh Schonfield: A
Case Study of Complex Jewish Identities (Eugene, OR: Wipf &
Stock, 2013), 60.
[3]
David Sedaca, “The Rebirth of Messianic Judaism,” in The Death of Messiah, ed. Kai
Kjær-Hansen (Baltimore, MD: Messianic Jewish Publishers, 1994), 108.
[4]
Louis Goldberg, Fire on the
Mountain: Past Renewals, Present Revivals, and the Coming Return of Israel
(Baltimore, MD: Messianic Jewish Publishers, 2000), 134.
[5]
Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Hebrew
Christianity: Its Theology, History, and Philosophy (Tustin, CA:
Ariel Ministries, 1983), 50.
