JEWS PROCLAIM GOSPEL THROUGHOUT NEW YORK AREA!

Transcription

1 VOLUME 1:5767 september 2006 JEWS PROCLAIM GOSPEL THROUGHOUT NEW YORK AREA! Jews for Jesus five-and-a-half year outreach to all cities with Jewish populations of 25,000 or more (outside of Israel) concluded in New York where some three million Jewish people reside. The campaign was divided into nine outreaches to include Manhattan, Brooklyn/Staten Island, Bronx/Westchester, Long Island, Jews for Jesus and the media have a long history. We first put up handbills on the kiosks of San Francisco State University and the University of California Berkeley using the slogan Jews for Jesus. The national press confused the number of posters with the number of people and literally named our movement. Thank you, Time and Newsweek! Since then, media have always helped to amplify the message of Jewish people believing in Jesus. That was certainly the case for the grand finale of BYG in New York. New Jersey, Queens, as well as special outreaches to the Hebrew, Russian and Yiddish speaking Jewish communities of New York. Media Make Much of Jews Believing in Jesus By Susan Perlman We hoped to raise a million dollars to broadcast the gospel throughout the air waves, newspapers, billboards and subways of New York. When about half that amount came in, it was truly generous, but we knew we needed to pare down our plans and pray that the Lord would amplify the message beyond our advertising dollars. He used the media to do just that! Prior to our arrival in New York, a reporter for The New York Times said he wanted to write a feature story on our campaign. Experience had taught us not to expect too much from major Above: Sara Herr (left) and Manhattan campaign leader Dan Sered (right) filmed by CBS for channel 2 Above: Chaplain David Boyd engaged in conversation with a Brooklynite secular newspapers. However, the article (published the first week of the campaign) was amazing. Our gospel statements were presented accurately and the Times even sent a videographer who brilliantly filmed the story for their online publication. This was the start of a dizzying media cycle after all, if it s important enough for the NY Times, other papers want in on the news! Then the news sources began seeing our evangelistic ads in subway cars, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the major daily newspapers throughout the area. (We also had evangelistic ads in Yediot, the major Israeli daily paper and in the Russian-language dailies as well.) And they continued reporting on the controversial Jews for Jesus. Perhaps our most dramatic ads were the 42 backlit signs we had placed in a much-frequented subway passageway near Times Square. Jewish leaders voiced their displeasure and The New York Post seized on it with the banner headline: Holy Hell Over Subway Jesus. Then the networks and local TV Continued on page 3: Media Behold Your God New York Reasons to Rejoice... Throughout the greater New York metro area, our campaigners handed out 1,872,800 broadside tracts. received contact information from 11,718 people who want to hear more from us, including 3,689 unsaved Jewish People and 2,712 unsaved Gentiles. knocked on 9,430 doors and connected with 2,170 people in their homes. phoned 25,790 Jewish homes and connected with 8,711 people by telephone. prayed with 241 Jewish people and 261 Gentiles to receive Jesus as Messiah and Lord. sent 3,396 copies of the Jesus for Jews book free to seekers who requested them through our evangelistic ads and mailings. Please join us in praising God and in praying for lasting fruit from these labors! INSIDE BYG Hopes and Dreams p. 2 Jesus: the Real King of Queens p. 3 Campaigning in the BYG Apple p. 8 Brooklyn: BYG and Beyond p. 8 Jews f r Jesus 60 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA Change Service Requested NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE PAID Santa Ana, CA Permit # 61 Gospel Closes Generation Gap p. 4 All the Way from Russia p. 9 Consecration Ceremony p. 5 Reaching the Ultra-Orthodox p. 9 The Next Generation p. 6 Hassidic Jews: Who Are They? p. 9 An Intern from Ithaca Reflects p. 6 Long Island Campaign p. 11 Softening the Ground in Bronx/Westchester p. 7 Jews, Jesus and Jersey p. 7 A Steward for all Seasons p. 12 Reaching Israel from NYC p. 14

2 2 JEWS FOR JESUS BYG Hopes and Dreams By David Brickner BEHOLD YOUR GOD March July 2006 As a result of the 55-city outreach: 17, 011,254 broadside tracts were distributed to people one-by-one 18,144 Jewish seekers gave their contact information to hear more about Jesus 22,406 Gentile seekers gave their contact information to hear more about Jesus 1,695 Jewish people prayed to receive Jesus 4,348 Gentiles prayed to receive Jesus 4,817 completed phone calls were made to seekers We measure what we can see, but we know that God continues to work in the lives of these and others in ways we cannot measure. Africa 2 Campaigns 4% South America 3 Campaigns 6% Europe 15 Campaigns 28% Australia 2 Campaigns 4% North America 31 Campaigns 58% BYG Beginnings How it all started The acronym for Behold Your God the Jews for Jesus five-year plan to reach every city (outside of Israel) with a population of 25,000 or more Jewish people was no coincidence. But acronyms aside, what we really dreamed was that through this BYG outreach, people all over the world would, indeed, see the Savior. The idea for Operation Behold Your God originated as one of many that surfaced in a two-day brainstorming session. The brains that were storming were those of the Jews for Jesus leadership who met in the upper room of our Shalom Hospitality House in San Francisco. The baton had been passed from Moishe Rosen to me, and I began my tenure by asking the senior staff to agree on how to articulate two things: a mission statement for Jews for Jesus and a set of our core values. It was important for us to affirm that new management was not going to change our purpose and values. The mission statement and core values reminded us tangibly of who we were and served as a platform for dreaming about what we would do in the future. And the brainstorming session was just that, a time for dreaming. We imagined ways that we might make the Messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue for Jewish people worldwide. We used 3x5 cards to jot down sky s-the-limit ideas of how to approach our mission for the next five years. We pinned up more than 100 such ideas onto large bulletin boards. With prayerful consideration, each leader chose seven ideas and applied small reddot stickers to the cards that expressed those. This dotting down process helped us narrow down the ideas to 15 or so displaying the greatest number of dots or votes. The leadership was energized, encouraged and overwhelmed by the prospect of trying to implement Behold Your God Campaign Cities even our narrowed-down list of ideas. We all agreed to introduce the ideas to our various branch locations and spend time in prayer with our fellow missionaries. We were asking God to show us a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal a term from the book Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras) that He would enable us to reach. The New York branch was most enthusiastic about a plan they called 25 by 5. The idea was to have, within a fiveyear period, an evangelism campaign in every city with a Jewish population of 25,000 or more. At the time, we did not even know how many cities that would encompass. Avi Snyder, who had a key role in articulating our mission statement, privately told me that we should call our BHAG Operation Behold Your God, based on Isaiah 40:9: O Zion, you who bring good tidings, get up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, you who bring good tidings, lift up your voice with strength, lift it up, be not afraid; say to the cities of Judah, Behold your God! The leadership really came together around the idea of campaigning in cities of 25,000 or more Jewish people and, after much prayer, we committed ourselves to Operation Behold Your God. It seemed like it would require us to reach many of the other goals we had talked about, such as developing new evangelism methods and materials, growing our number of missionaries, and raising up new leadership. All of these and more would be necessary in order to implement Behold Your God. At first, we listed 64 cities for the BYG campaigns, but on further investigation into the population levels, we concluded that 55 cities outside of Israel had Jewish populations of 25,000 or more. For a five-year program, we had to conduct at least 11 campaigns a year, but we actually started fairly slowly and ramped up to a pace that enabled us to complete all 55 in approximately five and a half years. Continued on page 3: BYG Hopes and Dreams Above: More than half of our BYG cities were in North America A Note from the Editor We hope you enjoy this month s special edition Newspaper. Please note, this is not a new format! Next month you ll be receiving your regular eight-page Jews for Jesus Newsletter as usual. If you are (or would like to be) a contributor to Jews for Jesus, we hope you ll be able to locate the donor envelope that was inserted into this paper for your convenience. In the event that it dropped out in the middle of nowhere, please forgive the inconvenience. We hope you ll still want to send in your gift to Jews for Jesus, 60 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA Thanks, and God bless you! Detroit Cleveland Pittsburgh Milwaukee Minsk Chicago Toronto Berlin Minneapolis Montreal St. Louis Boston Manchester London Hartford Paris Seattle New York Toulouse Portland Philadelphia San Francisco Baltimore Los Angeles Washington Marseilles Lyon Atlanta San Diego West Palm Beach Las Vegas Fort Lauderdale Phoenix Miami Denver Tampa Mexico City Houston Dallas Rio de Janeiro Sao Paulo Buenos Aires St. Petersburg Kiev Moscow Dnepropetrovsk Odessa Budapest Cape Town Kharkov Johannesburg Melbourne Sydney Above: Here you can see 53 of our 55 BYG campaign cities. One city cannot be mentioned because of the sensitive nature of its location. The final city, Lakewood, New Jersey, was conducted in sync with the greater New York area campaign this summer. WE EXIST TO MAKE THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS AN UNAVOIDABLE ISSUE TO OUR JEWISH PEOPLE WORLDWIDE. JEWS F R JESUS INTERNATIONAL HEADQUARTERS: 60 HAIGHT STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CA jfj@jewsforjesus.org; HOME PAGE: ALSO WORKING IN: AUSTRALIA, BRAZIL, CANADA, FRANCE, GERMANY, ISRAEL, RUSSIA, SOUTH AFRICA,UKRAINE and THE UNITED KINGDOM. EDITOR: RUTH ROSEN; EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: SETH RICHARDS; ART DIRECTION: PAIGE SAUNDERS; DESIGN: DAVID YAPP; VOLUME 1:5767, SEPTEMBER 2006

3 JEWS FOR JESUS 3 Continued from page 2: BYG Hopes and Dreams BYG Plans How to go about it From the start, it became obvious that I could not effectively oversee the entire Behold Your God program on my own. Initially, we created commissions on literature, recruitment, finance, follow-up, etc., to deal with overseeing various aspects of the campaign. While these commissions were helpful, they proved to be impractical for providing the direct oversight that each campaign leader needed. So we created a structure to oversee BYG proceedings and called it the Strategic Coordinations Council (SCC). The SCC was comprised of a cross section of leaders of different ages, experience and areas of expertise. I asked Avi Snyder to head the council. Each member of the SCC also served on one of the commissions. In addition, each member served as a liaison to one or more Behold Your God campaigns in any given year. This helped to motivate the campaign leaders as well as to provide the resources necessary to fulfill the assignment. The SCC became the advisory board and cheerleader for those campaign leaders. The team would meet by teleconference every week for an hour of discussion and prayer. The SCC also led a three-hour session of reporting and discussion in each council (leadership) meeting, where many senior staff from around the world gathered three times a year. Those sessions helped us see our progress, learn from our mistakes and brainstorm for future campaigns. Two of the SCC members, Jonathan Bernd and Andrew Barron, put together a preparation manual that helped campaign leaders to lay the groundwork by meeting various goals at particular junctures, beginning at 18 months, 12 months, 6 months, and 3 months prior to campaigns. Continued on page 4: BYG Hopes and Dreams Jesus: the Real King of Queens By Ruth Rosen Campaign leaders Bruce Rapp and Larry Stamm Yosef Ashurov, one of our outreach workers in Odessa, was handing out broadsides at 108th Street when he met a former neighbor of his from Uzbekistan. Mara moved here 13 years ago. I told her that God loves her, and Y shua died so that she could be made right with Him, Yosef said. She seemed very interested so I invited her to our concert. She walked for two hours just to be there! When she arrived, Elizabeth (our missionary to Queens, who is originally from Uzbekistan) shared the gospel with her again. Mara listened very carefully, and then prayed with Elizabeth to receive the Lord. That was just one example of the synergy between the local and overseas workers on the Queens campaign. Like Brooklyn, the Queens campaign overlapped with the Russian-speaking campaign only more so. In Brooklyn, the Russian speakers operated separately from the actual Brooklyn campaign in terms of hotel, schedules, etc. In Queens, it was really one campaign, with overseas and American missionaries rooming together, eating together and hitting the streets together. The Russian speakers on the Queens campaign had all done outreach in the U.S. before. For those who didn t speak English, we had translators. There was also plenty of non-verbal communication, hugging and thumbs up. And the Russian broadsides were Above: The Queens bannering crew drew plenty of attention over the Long Island Expressway actually bi-lingual so that non-russian speakers could distribute them, too. Of course there were areas of Queens to reach that were not primarily Russian. As in Manhattan, there are many areas of high foot traffic, great for broadsiding. We even designed one of our new broadsides especially for this campaign: The King of Queens (you can see it at byg/the_king_of_queens_r.pdf). Campaign leaders Bruce and Larry also wanted to go beyond the tried and true sorties. One way of doing that was through the Chagall exhibits. Jerry Karabensh, a long-time friend of Jews for Jesus, loaned us his Chagall collection and flew out to present a lecture with each showing. He explained how Chagall illustrated scenes from both the Old and New Testaments and portrayed Jesus crucifixion in many of his paintings. Even the work commissioned by the Knesset portrayed Isaac spreading his arms as though he was being crucified. Following Jerry s lectures, guests viewed the prints, and our missionaries conversed with them in a relaxed atmosphere. The Queens campaign also employed the use of banners on an overpass above the Long Island Expressway (a main artery into the city). It became obvious that this was helping to make Jesus an unavoidable issue when phone calls to our Messiah line spiked during the times our campaigners were bannering. One caller to our Manhattan office complained, I saw you idiots over the LIE! You are causing a traffic jam! Nevertheless, numerous serious inquirers called after seeing our banners and advertisements, whether in subways, street corners or highways. God used even the hardships for His Continued on page 6: King of Queens Continued from page 1: Media Hebrew and Yiddish language publications leave us out. Each suburban campaign Westchester, Long Island and Northern New Jersey all had at least one article in their local Jewish newspapers. Altogether, we had significant articles in over 35 newspapers, major television news coverage on 14 programs and several radio interviews. All of this amplified what our missionaries were saying as they interacted one-to-one with tens of thousands of seekers. Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you planned for us no one can recount to you; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare (Psalm 40:5). Below: left to right: changing circles (before) into stars (after) satisfied the MTA. Above: Lou Young interviewed Susan Perlman for the CBS 11 o clock news stations started calling. And kept calling. ABC, CBS, FOX and Channels 5, 9, 11 and 1 ran footage of the underground ads and of our missionaries distributing gospel tracts. It seemed like David Brickner and I were being interviewed non-stop regarding Jews and Jesus and the controversy. And each time we were able to proclaim the gospel. Meanwhile, the counter-missionaries had sent the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) a tip that our JFJ logo in the style of their subway car directional signs could be a violation of their trademark. The MTA demanded we discontinue use of the artwork. While we probably could have won that battle in court, we wanted our energy and financial resources spent elsewhere, so we discontinued use of the logo on our website. For our T-shirts, we came up with the idea of making Stars of David out of the circles. The tip from our opposition totally backfired because The New York Post loved the story and plastered the account onto the pages of their paper in an article titled Jesus Icon Clash MTA Smites Logo. Other newspapers picked up the story and the television stations couldn t get enough of us. We even got national coverage on Fox s DaySide morning show and Fox News Live in midday! Jewish news sources also covered our campaign. The Jerusalem Post did a feature article and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which is the main wire service for hundreds of Jewish newspapers around the world, wrote a major feature, too. Nor did the local Above: our controversial subway ads

4 4 JEWS FOR JESUS Gospel Closes Generation Gap By Anne Elfbaum This summer, the Tilleses (Murray and Alana, along with their 14-year-old son Nathan and 11-year-old daughter Shayna) shared a mission trip together: a week with the Jews for Jesus Behold Your God New York campaign. Murray and Nathan took to the streets to evangelize, while Alana and Shayna stayed behind the scenes, Above, right to left: Murray, Nathan and Alana Tilles cooking and taking care of laundry, among other things. While Loren and Martha Jacobs were proclaiming Jesus in BYG Manhattan, their 18-year-old daughter Aliza was evangelizing along with the Long Island team. Mom and Dad stuck around for two weeks before moving on to other summer plans; Aliza was there for the duration, giving up most of her summer to tell people about Jesus. 18-year-old Melissa Weinisch had already left Manhattan, along with the rest of the Liberated Wailing Wall, by the time her mother Shoshannah arrived for her twoweek evangelistic stint in the Big Apple. (Shosh, by the way, came to the Lord through the ministry of former Jews for Jesus missionary Martha Jacobs, in 1979, and served on our staff before marrying Stewart Weinisch, who is also a Jewish believer in ministry.) Melissa and the team ministered in music throughout the various boroughs and handed out plenty of tracts as well. Melissa recruited her mother to come on the campaign. Isaac Brickner and Jesse Zaretsky flew in for a week of the Manhattan campaign straight from Camp Gilgal, where they d served as counselors for two weeks. They arrived exhausted from camp and plunged into an equally, if not more exhausting campaign schedule. Meanwhile, Isaac s father David was Above: Jeff Cohen busy as commander-in-chief over all nine campaigns and Jesse s dad Tuvya was working hard on the New Jersey campaign. Jews for Jesus board member Jeff Cohen had an intense time of witnessing in Brooklyn the first week of campaign, was videotaped by the New York Times and quoted extensively in the Times article and was back in Atlanta well before his 18-year-old son Joshua arrived to finish the last two weeks of Behold Your God in New Jersey. And there were several other campaigners similarly related to one another, including Steve and Janie-sue Wertheim and their daughter Rebekah, as well as Matt and Leigh Sieger and their daughter Ariel, who participated in our teen program, Halutzim. No doubt all these parents and kids have had their moments of frustration with one another. Even the Above: Shoshannah and Melissa Weinisch best parent-child relationships come down to a battle of the wills at some point. But when parents and kids are both more interested in God s will than their own, they can share a terrific experience of serving Him. Take the Cohens, for example. Jeff was recruited by Karol Joseph, having served with her on BYG Hartford in Josh was recruited by Josh Sofaer, having experienced our teen program, Halutzim (led by Sofaer), in Father and son decided to serve on BYG completely independently of one another. Jeff says he came to be a better board member with more first-hand experience in the actual ministry. And because I felt my witness to unbelievers had gotten rusty. I was spending time focused mostly inside the Body of Messiah. He also was glad to come on campaign before his son. We stayed in touch by phone so I could give him a few pointers. New York was a little more intense than Hartford. Being on the streets, dealing with my apprehensions and experiencing God s comfort I talked to him about all of it knowing that he was also headed for the frontlines. Continued from page 3: BYG Hopes and Dreams BYG Decision How it almost came to a halt We launched our first BYG campaign in March of That same year a series of financial downturns in the U.S. hit hard. The dotcom bust and the terror attacks of September 11 impacted the economy, and many ministries found themselves in financial difficulty and facing drastic cuts. Meanwhile, Jews for Jesus had begun to launch the largest evangelistic outreach of our ministry s history, and connected with that we had a nationwide media campaign. We were also going through a computer conversion at our San Francisco headquarters, which caused more upheaval than we d anticipated. When the reality of all these problems hit home, we had to make some sacrifices. We had to let some of our administrative staff go (as did many ministries at that time) which was painful. And still, more adjustments were necessary. Senior staff met with the board to discuss whether we would postpone BYG or go forward and the only way we could go forward was by cutting salaries. It was a time of testing as to whether or not God had really called us to do this. I am proud to say that our senior staff all agreed to take a 20 percent cut in pay. Those with somewhat less seniority took a ten percent cut, while missionaries who hadn t reached seniority took no cut. With those senior level cuts, we were able to move ahead. Those cuts lasted for six months and then we were able to restore the normal salaries. BYG Methods Something old, something new Since Jews for Jesus conducted our first New York City witnessing campaign in 1974, we have utilized tried-and-true methods of street evangelism. Sometimes, simply seeing our Jews for Jesus T-shirts is enough to prompt a person to engage us in conversation. Over the years, we ve settled on a system of three T-shirts per campaign, Josh, who just graduated high school, has enrolled at Wheaton College, where he ll soon be a freshman. He is a big sports fan, especially when it comes to the Yankees. He probably would have been hanging out with friends, reading and going to movies during the last two weeks of July had he not chosen to come on campaign. Having been on Halutzim, he was excited when Josh Sofaer called and invited him to participate. I m here because I can t think of anything more productive that I could be doing with my time, he said, when interviewed during the campaign. Who can blame Jeff for being a proud papa? Josh is pretty mature in his faith, having known the Lord since he was five or six. Jeff came to faith when he was 33. We are actually about the same age in the Lord, Jeff smiled. We both had a chance to be with our extended family [in Messiah] by being on this campaign... and the experience has given us all the more to share with each other back home. with teams wearing the same color/design on a given day. This makes us easily identifiable (and switching T-shirts daily is a must for laundering when you are in sweltering subway stations). But it helps to be able to offer people something interesting to read. Broadside tracts are one of the hallmarks of Jews for Jesus. We create each one to be an invitation to interact with the gospel. These tri-fold pamphlets deal with contemporary themes in a humorous and thoughtprovoking way. Each one contains scripture verses, and is designed to be read within a minute or two. Jews for Jesus has distributed millions of these broadsides during our campaigns and we ve found them effective for engaging people on the streets. Along with handing out literature, our campaigners utilize a tool we call a proposal statement. The statement is really a series of questions and affirmations about Jesus, and, for those who are willing, it leads to a prayer of repentance and surrender to Jesus. Other methods we ve employed to reach people include phoning homes, utilizing secular media for gospel advertisements, outdoor concerts sometimes we even conduct our own parades. As BYG progressed, in many cities we found it necessary to use a multipronged strategy involving all of these modes of outreach. And we added methods we hadn t used in prior campaigns, including door-to-door evangelism, special events like evangelistic film showings (we used our own Survivor Stories and Forbidden Peace ), public debates between an anti-missionary rabbi and a Jewish Christian scholar, and direct mailings to homes of Jewish people in the areas of the campaigns. We have even placed kiosks in shopping malls. Our philosophy regarding methods is never to discard something that works just because it is not new, while at the same time never giving up looking for fresh ways to tell the gospel. Continued on page 5: BYG Hopes and Dreams Above: She s baack! Former Jews for Jesus staff member Martha Jacobs (mentioned left) handing out broadsides in Bryant Park

5 Continued from page 4: BYG Hopes and Dreams BYG Cheese Who s in charge around here? Above: Dan Sered, one of our younger leaders, led the Manhattan portion of Behold Your God New York Before we launched BYG, relatively few of our missionaries had led evangelistic campaigns. Throughout the ministry s history, that position was reserved for the more senior leaders. As we faced the challenge of completing 12 to 15 campaigns per year, that had to change. BYG not only provided opportunities for younger leaders, it made it necessary for them to lead which was part of the reason we felt this project was right for us. I knew that I ought to lead the first BYG campaign beginning in San Francisco (where our founder, Moishe Rosen, handed out the first broadside of the campaign). I knew we were going to end with NYC and that I should lead that campaign as well. Other than that, leadership was up for grabs. And quite a few newer leaders rose to the occasion. Sometimes I would ask someone to consider leading a campaign, but a number of our newer leaders stepped up on his or her own. Each person who requested an opportunity to lead was duly considered. Sometimes a person s background in a given area (culture, language, etc.) made him or her the obvious choice. Sometimes leadership was a combination of a seasoned veteran and a younger leader. One of the most encouraging aspects of BYG has been seeing the next generation of Jews for Jesus leaders develop. I don t mean just the campaign leaders, but within each campaign, particularly on the NY grand finale, the team leaders tended to be younger people with more senior missionaries on their team to uphold and cheer them on. BYG Disappointment It wasn t all that we hoped... Recruitment was definitely our biggest BYG disappointment. We had anticipated that the BYG campaigns would produce a whole new crop of potential young missionaries and that did not happen. Before this time, we had annual summer witnessing campaigns that fit with the college break system, as well as other special outreaches during spring or winter breaks. With several campaigns each year, we could not schedule them all to occur during college breaks. So we expanded the parameters of who could serve on campaigns both in terms of the age range and in terms of allowing non-jewish campaigners. Even so, those participants who fell within these newly-expanded parameters were only to comprise a certain percentage of our campaigners in each city. And we postponed more than one campaign that we d announced because we hadn t recruited sufficiently to meet our standards. Frankly, even during the summers, we found it difficult to recruit enough young people, particularly when we had more than one campaign per summer. I suspect that some of our campaign locations were also not a draw for younger people. Whereas we had mature and godly campaigners who gave their all, many did not have the physical energy needed for this kind of saturation effort. I don t think the problem is peculiar to Jews for Jesus; it s a challenge that I think has existed since Jesus walked the earth and told His disciples to pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers because the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. The fact that we had such a difficult time recruiting young Jewish believers for the campaigns and the fact that very few of those who actually came to Christ through our outreach could be considered eligible for serving with Jews for Jesus has to be one of the biggest failures of the campaign. Continued on page 6: BYG Hopes and Dreams Consecration Ceremony By Seth Richards The shofar blasted as some 200 campaigners and stewards gathered on Shabbat for the consecration service to start the Behold Your God finale. The sound of the ram s horn was a robust call for us to present ourselves for consecration. We gathered to ask God to help us reach His people in the greater New York area we gathered to dedicate ourselves corporately to that cause. The service took place in a Chinese Alliance church on the Lower East Side. On the wall hung a cross inscribed with Chinese characters: a perfect reminder that God sent His son for the salvation of both Gentile and Jew alike. Adjacent to that wall, at the front of the church, a huge replica of the Ten Commandments chiseled in Hebrew was prominently displayed. It was a joyous scene as campaigners greeted and embraced like family. Some were meeting for the first time while others were reunited with close friends and in some cases, relatives. Stephen Katz and a group of our musically-gifted staff members ushered us into worship with a mix of Messianic favorites and contemporary choruses. Some lifted their voices and others quieted their hearts as we reflected upon the goodness of God and contemplated the impending challenges. It was truly beautiful to hear so many Jewish people of different languages and cultures worship together with lyrics projected onto a screen in English, Russian and Hebrew. I couldn t help feeling this was a foreshadowing of the time when every knee shall bow and tongue confess the glory of the Lord. The worship continued as campaign members took turns washing one another s feet, a tangible expression of the humility we would need to serve throughout the campaign. The theme of service (to God, to each other and to those we encounter) was woven throughout the ceremony. JEWS FOR JESUS 5 Executive Director David Brickner roused our hearts with a sermon about the urgency of our message and how people desperately need life, yet insist on distracting themselves from the realities of death around them. He encouraged the new campaigners to depend on God for boldness and advised the seasoned campaigners to likewise struggle to rely upon God, recognizing their weakness and need for God just as much as those just starting out. After the sermon, we prayed corporately, again in three languages. This was followed by prayers for the leaders as the chaplains anointed them with oil. Then each campaigner and steward was also anointed with oil by one of the campaign chaplains. This symbolic act furthered the theme of consecration, anointing us in preparation for servitude. At the end, covered in oil, we all squeezed together for a picture. Whether or not it was intentional, taking time to get 200 people situated and looking into the camera at the same time reminded us that as servants, we must have patience. We concluded with a final time of worship. As the shofar blasted once again, it seemed a fitting way to emphasize the theme of Behold Your God from Isaiah 40:9, O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! Above: Worship during consecration ceremony: clap your hands, all ye people! Come Celebrate the High Holidays with Jews for Jesus! This year the High Holy Day of Rosh Hashanah (the Feast of Trumpets, also known as the Jewish New Year) begins at sundown on September 22. Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) begins at sundown on October 1. You don t need to be Jewish to attend our Jewish High Holy Day services, though it is a wonderful opportunity to invite a Jewish friend. Expect a service of worship through song, liturgy, Scripture and of course, the blowing of the shofar (ram s horn) as we lift up the name of Jesus within the context of these biblical holidays. Services will be held in the following Jews for Jesus branches: Los Angeles Rosh Hashanah: Friday, 9/22/06, 8:00 P.M. Yom Kippur: Sunday, 10/1/06, 7:00 P.M. For more information, call San Francisco Rosh Hashanah: Friday, 9/22/06, 7:30 P.M. Yom Kippur: Sunday, 10/1/06, 7:30 P.M. For more information, call ext. 125 Chicago Rosh Hashanah: Friday, 9/22/06, 7:30 P.M. Yom Kippur: Sunday, 10/1/06, 7:30 P.M. For more information, call Miami Rosh Hashanah: Saturday, 9/23/06, 7:00 P.M. For more information, call Boston Rosh Hashanah: Friday, 9/22/06, 7:30 P.M. Yom Kippur: Sunday, 10/1/06, 6:00 P.M. For more information, call Washington, D.C. Rosh Hashanah: Friday, 9/22/06, 7:30 P.M. For more information, call New York Rosh Hashanah: Friday, 9/22/06, 7:00 P.M. Yom Kippur: Sunday, October 1, 7:00 P.M. For more information, call Phoenix Rosh Hashanah: Friday, 9/22/06, 7:00 P.M. Yom Kippur: Sunday, 10/1/06, 6:00 P.M. For more information, call

6 6 JEWS FOR JESUS Continued from page 3: King of Queens Above: Chagall exhibit drew interested viewers purposes. When Queens experienced a power outage due to the heat, it meant no elevator and no air-conditioning in the hotel. One day, several campaigners decided to remain in the lobby for their rest time. There, they ended up praying with one of the hotel staff to receive the Lord. And that s a witnessing campaign for you... God uses our weakness and frailty to show forth His strength! Postscript: One week after the campaign ended, Bruce and Tracy Rapp moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where they will be Above: Micha Cohen engaged in conversation Micha Cohen is a general missionary with Jews for Jesus in Chicago, but he spent the first and fourth weeks of July on the BYG campaign in Manhattan. During the second two weeks he remained in the city and led Halutzim, a Jews for Jesus program for Jewish teens who believe in Y shua (Jesus). The program helps young Jewish believers explore their identity, both as Jews and as believers in Jesus. They do this in the context of the Jewish cultural sites Manhattan offers, discussions and prayer times amongst themselves... and sorties with the regular New York campaigners. Halutzim is all that and more. This was Micha s second year leading the program, and he kept busy, as did his able assistants, Rebekah Wertheim and Nathan Jacobs. Some of us older folk in Jews for Jesus recall Micha as a beautiful baby boy.* We watched him grow into an adorable toddler, a somewhat awkward (who isn t?) teen... and now he is a godly (and handsome) young man, married to a wonderful Jewish believer named Leah, with two beautiful baby girls of their own: proclaiming the gospel among the 100,000 plus Jewish residents in the area. Bruce has had a heart to pioneer this work since our Behold Your God campaign in Phoenix in February and March, The outpost will officially open on September 22, with their first public meeting: a High Holiday service. (see page 5). Pray for wisdom, creativity and strength for the Rapps in this new venture, as well as a good transition from New York to Arizona. And please pray that God will raise up a core of volunteers to help them. The Next Generation... and the Next By Ruth Rosen Selah Joy (19 months) and Tikvah Abigail (four months). Having grown up as an MK (missionary kid) I know that following in one s parents ministry footsteps is hardly a given. So I asked Micha to tell our readers about his choice. Question: First of all, tell us about your childhood involvement with Jews for Jesus. Micha: As far back as I can remember I ve always been involved in Jews for Jesus children s programs. While my parents were earning their masters degrees at Fuller Seminary, Jews for Jesus had a summer program, Messiah s Moshav for us kids. We learned together and played together and had our own little community. So between the ages of 8-12 I spent my summers with the other Jews for Jesus kids, who became my best friends. As my dad had different assignments with Jews for Jesus, we moved here and there. The friends I d made at Moshav remained my friends; a constant when it seemed like everything else was changing. Continued on page 13: Generation Continued from page 5: BYG Hopes and Dreams BYG Opposition Every knock is a boost God s winning ways typically employ the small and weak to overcome the powers that be and thus show Himself as the real Power-To-Be-Reckoned- With. Regardless of how our opposition may perceive us, we know ourselves to be small and weak and therefore prime candidates for God to use. And when God does this type of against the odds battle, He s got an age-old technique that we never grow tired or bored with seeing. It was best articulated by Joseph, when comforting his brothers in Genesis: But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive (Genesis 50:20). Even so, what our opposition has meant to hinder us has spread the gospel seed further than we could have on our own, and we trust that God will bring it to fruition. Take the media for example. Numerous campaigns were preceded by newspaper articles warning the Jewish community of our coming. We sometimes heard people parroting the suggested anti-missionary line, No thank you: I m happy with my Judaism, but more often the warnings seemed to create a buzz and curiosity. People are not accustomed to being told who they may and may not talk to and so these warnings probably only worked on those who would not have been inclined to speak to us anyway. Pretty much any article that was written against us ended up creating a platform for even further broadcast of the good news. The media attention that came as a result of dire predictions that Jewish When I walk around the littered city streets I try to adopt the distant urban stare of the natives, but it s probably pretty obvious that I m fresh out of the country. I like telling people that where I m from, the tallest buildings are silos, and they usually ask, What s a silo? I didn t expect New York City to have such an effect on me. As I have been rejected by the people of New York for the sake of the gospel, I feel like I ve been rejected by the city itself. I long for the bucolic farms and verdant hills of home. When I look out the windows in New York, I see empty brick walls or crowded streets boasting of man s creation rather than God s. a summer journal entry I had prayed for a challenge to further my faith, saying God, here am I, use me for Your purpose. That s probably why I ended up working with Jews for Jesus for the summer. community leaders made about us often far exceeded whatever we might have been able to produce on our own. Media always generates more media, and that is exactly what happened. I don t believe that we ve ever had as many news stories, in terms of secular newspapers, television, radio and internet, written about our mission and our message. What always delighted me was how these secular news organizations understood and accurately reported what Behold Your God was all about. Sometimes I felt like these news reporters articulated our goals more succinctly than some of our own staff. Every report on Fox News or MSNBC or Canadian news or in the New York Times explaining Behold Your God put a smile on my face. I believe it was a continuing reaffirmation of how God led us to this Big Hairy Audacious Goal. And the campaigns with the most media coverage (probably Toronto, Washington, D.C. and the greater New York area) invariably began with complaints from our opposition. Then there was the lawyer s letter we received from the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), which generally speaking, has not been at all hostile towards us. They accepted our ads in the subway cars and in the tunnels. When pressured to take them down, they explained that the ads did not violate their policies and were in accordance with First Amendment rights. However, they took exception to a logo we had on one of our T-shirts that utilized three colored circles with letters inside (see p. 3). While we did not believe they would have won a case against us, we had no problem complying with their demand to stop Continued on page 7: BYG Hopes & Dreams/ BYG Opposition An Intern from Ithaca Reflects on Missionary Work in NYC By Seth Richards When I accepted my position as editorial intern at Jews for Jesus, I knew I d be at the San Francisco headquarters for a month and then in New York for a month of campaign. I figured I d spend my days at the computer from 8-5 only marginally outside my comfort zone. And, in San Francisco, it actually did work out pretty much that way. When it came to New York, I knew I d be going out on the streets to witness here and there. But I didn t know that I d adhere to the campaign schedule, arriving at the office at 6:30 A.M. and often not returning to the hotel until 11 P.M. That s where the stretch came and in case that sounds like a complaint, it s also where I found the answer to prayer. There I was, an intern who had just finished his junior year at Grove City College, proclaiming the gospel on a New York City street corner some four hours away from my home in Ithaca, New York. On the surface I was handing out broadside tracts. But on the inside I was wrestling with a question that had taken me by surprise: why was it that for the first time in my life I felt ashamed of the gospel? As I stood on the curb of 34th Street handing out broadsides (tracts inviting interaction with the gospel) passersby sneered, cursed, and spat at me. One man ripped the broadside I handed him and threw the tiny pieces in my face, unaware Continued on page 13: Intern

7 JEWS FOR JESUS 7 Continued from page 6: BYG Hopes & Dreams/BYG Opposition using the logo. We simply turned the circles into Jewish stars, which satisfied the MTA... and this turned into another media event covered by various newspapers, local TV news programs and who knows how many blogs. We are accustomed to opposition from various sources. But the really painful and unexpected opposition comes occasionally from brothers and sisters. Yet God has used even those instances for good. In one city, a member of our anchor church convinced the pastor that it would not be best for the church to host us. We had very short notice to find a new anchor church, but God had a plan. The pastor of the church that came to our rescue had just been praying about how to be a testimony to the Jewish community in his neighborhood... the day before the campaign leader called asking if he would consider partnering with us. That church was an excellent base of operations for our Denver campaign. In Lyon, France we faced opposition from another Jewish mission, the head of which discouraged local Christian pastors from participating with us. This brother pastored a church in that city, while we were virtually unknown. Many churches heeded him and refused to have anything to do with us. In fact, the only churches that wanted to partner with us were outside of the center of the city, far from where we needed to be located. In the end, one of the churches put us in touch with a Christian ministry to Muslims, which had a more centrally located facility. That ministry graciously offered us the use of their building as a day base on the condition that we cover up our Jews for Jesus T-shirts prior to coming in or out of the building. They didn t feel it would help their ministry in the Muslim community to have people with Jews for Jesus emblazoned on their shirts identified with the center. Nevertheless, we enjoyed good fellowship and worked out of that facility for the entire campaign. As it happened, fully one third of all the unbelieving contacts that we received in Lyon were Muslims. We gave those contacts directly to this ministry, which benefited their work in the Muslim community and enabled us to bless them as they had blessed us. Continued on page 12: BYG Hopes & Dreams Softening the Ground in Bronx/Westchester By Efram Fuchs responsive to door-to-door knocking... or phone calling either, as campaigners found in the first two weeks. However, halfway through the month, rainstorms pounded the area. That seemed to be a metaphor for the work of the Holy Spirit on this campaign because along with the soil, it seemed some spiritual ground was softened. That week, during calling, two Jewish people in one night prayed to receive Y shua as their Messiah and Redeemer. Jews, Jesus and Jersey By Seth Richards Campaign leaders Josh Sofaer, Garrett Smith and Tuvya Zaretsky Campaign leader Josh Sofaer can tell you that reaching people in the suburbs is a whole lot different than city street campaigns. It s not that there are no people... they are just all in their cars! he explains. The Jersey Shore was the best place for distributing literature and having conversations, though it s quite a shlep (sometimes two hours) to get there. We also handed out tracts at the PATH trains leading into Manhattan and at the airport, which enables you to reach a variety of people, though not necessarily those from New Jersey. In addition to handing out tracts, we took to bannering. We d bring signs, usually about 10' x 3', to a residential or commercial area. Using six-foot poles, we d lift them high, displaying our message to oncoming traffic with smiles on our faces and hands waving. The first day that I did bannering, I was frankly skeptical. I wondered if it had any evangelistic impact. That afternoon, a friend called to encourage us. He said that the Lord had impressed upon him a Scripture to tell me, but he had no idea why. It was Jeremiah 31:21, Set up signposts, make landmarks; Set your heart toward the highway, the way in which you went. Turn back, O virgin of Israel, turn back to these your cities. Wow! This guy had no idea about our bannering that morning. Talk about a confirmation! Plus, lifting up a sign with the name of Jesus did evoke responses as people honked their horns, waved out their windows and some called the number written on some of the banners. Positive or negative, people responded to the message. Another way to reach people is by telephone. One day we focused solely on phoning and made 1,000 calls to Jewish homes. Stan Telchin was on his sixth or so call of the day. After some conversation regarding a book we had offered in a mailing to her home, he asked the Above: Lyn Bond, representing Jews for Jesus at the Newark Airport middle-aged woman who answered the phone, Who do you think Jesus is? She honestly responded, I don t have the faintest idea about who he really is... Stan said, Isn t that strange considering the Messianic prophecies in the Bible? Have you read them? She said she hadn t read the prophecies and Stan replied, Isn t it amazing that we have been called the people of the book yet many of us don t know anything about Messianic prophecies? The conversation continued and the woman confided to Stan that her son had passed away about a year ago. Stan prayed that the Lord would give her peace and comfort, which she appreciated. It opened a door for Stan to tell her about the gospel message and the promise of eternal life in Y shua. Stan asked if he could pray for her and then with her to receive Y shua. She warmly responded, Please do. New Jersey may be more like a little grape than a Big Apple, but God has fields ready to harvest in the suburbs, too. Above: Campaign leader Amer Olson seeks to engage a passer-by Campaign leaders Amer Olson and Jhan Moskowitz Then on Tuesday of week four, we had a screening of Survivor Stories at a church in the Bronx. It wasn t a huge crowd; a little over 60 people attended. The audience included six Jewish believers and at least two unbelieving Jewish people that we know of (both of whom came with a believing Jewish friend or family member). We have a very strong, close Jewish community here, a man informed campaign leader Amer Olsen over the phone. We won t stand for this. This was the Jews for Jesus Bronx/ Westchester campaign, headquartered in White Plains, New York. People didn t expect to see Jews for Jesus in the Bronx or Westchester. They expected to see us on the other end of their commute in the subways or on the streets of Manhattan. But when they arrived home to see us in the Bronx or Westchester, it got their attention. In affluent Westchester County many people are self-satisfied. Suburbanites in large estates are not especially Amer relates: After the film, I read Isaiah 53 and encouraged people to speak to one of us if they wanted to know more about the peace that Messiah brings. A Jewish believer from Westchester introduced himself to me and explained that he had intended to come to the showing we had closer to his home. He was unable to make it but it was b shert (meant to be). When he decided to come to the Bronx showing, his father, Steve, a Holocaust survivor who lives in the Bronx, agreed to come along. I talked to Steve, learned of his life in Hungary and his experience in the ghetto. He still had the scars. When I asked whether he thought Jesus was the Continued on page 15: Bronx/Westchester Above: Bannering in New Jersey Below: Tatiana Tritschuk handing out broadsides in Newark

8 8 JEWS FOR JESUS Campaigning in the BYG Apple Above: Monté Hinojosa in Times Square at night Campaign leaders Dan Sered and Greg Savitt Ask Manhattan campaigner Sharon Turnil her favorite place to hand out broadsides and she ll tell you Bryant Park, because people are relaxed and willing to talk. (Or as Michelle, who also favors Bryant Park put it, People are chillin and willin. ) Monté Hinojosa will tell you his favorite sortie site is the subway station at 59th and Lexington (dubbed the Panic Room by campaigners back in 1980) because people come from all directions so it s hectic and you can hand out a lot of broadsides. The Manhattan campaign has more places than anywhere in the greater New York area to hand out tracts. And the various places play to the respective strengths of different campaigners. So why didn t we just bring the whole BYG crew to Manhattan? Let s face it, Staten Island is not the city that never sleeps. The Bronx is not the Big Apple. Et cetera. The wonderful thing about having a nine-in-one New York grand finale was the way that God used each campaign to Above: Murray Tilles on a lunch-hour sortie create a series of impressions greater than the sum of its parts. Someone from New Jersey would get a phone call from Jews for Jesus, would even hang up on the person. Next morning they d drive into Manhattan, seeing one of our bannering teams on the way. They d return home that night and phone the Manhattan office, because that was the number on the tract they received at lunchtime perhaps down on Wall Street. After seeing us three times in one 24-hour period they had to ask, By Sid Rothstein Alright already, what s all this about Jews for Jesus? Each campaign contributed to the cumulative effect of the BYG grand finale. But Manhattan made the greatest series of impressions simply because so many people in the greater New York metro area commute there... and because Manhattan is the media capital of the world. People who saw members of the Manhattan team on the news (see p. 1, 2) were also more likely to interact with our people when they saw them in Long Island or Rockland County. So there was a tremendous buzz of excitement and energy in the Manhattan campaign. Each night at dinner we would have story time and campaigners would tell about various divine appointments. For example, Sara prayed that God would bring someone whom she could pray with to receive the Lord. She noticed a man standing on the corner, so she approached him. Sara shared the gospel with him and told him that to be saved, he needed to repent and ask for God s forgiveness through Jesus. The man asked if he could do so right away. Afterwards, Sara explained that she had prayed to meet someone who was ready to receive Jesus. He replied that he had a strange feeling that he needed to be standing right where he was. Sometimes it was a matter of being in the wrong place at the right time. For example, campaigners Ryan, Monté and Jeff were on their way to Battery Park, but got on the wrong train. During their detour, they met a Jewish woman an Israeli named Dinah and her Catholic boyfriend, Kevin. She and Kevin were sincerely curious and our campaigners were able to have an extended conversation with them about the gospel. The couple was excited about the chance to continue the discussion in the future. Talk about God s strength being made perfect in our weakness! Continued on page 14: Manhattan Brooklyn: BYG and Beyond By Ruth Rosen Campaign leaders Karol Joseph and Efraim Goldstein Karol Joseph is nothing if not adamant. When Behold Your God started, I remember telling David Brickner that all of our missionaries should move to New York City because every single borough needed its own branch. There are two million Jewish people in NYC that is two fifths of the country s Jewish population. While Brickner was not ready to send all our missionaries to open more branches throughout New York, he did agree that Karol should begin a new branch of Jews for Jesus in Brooklyn. Joseph, who has headed up our training program in Manhattan for the last eight years, will remain in Manhattan through December and commute to Brooklyn a couple of times a week. In January, she will pass her training responsibilities to Robyn Wilk and move to Brooklyn. There are 500,000 Jews in Brooklyn. It s the seat of the Orthodox community and the Jerusalem of the diaspora. Nice phrasing. I asked if that was a description she d come up with or if she was quoting someone. I have no idea, she laughed. Above: Karol Joseph engaged in conversation But she is serious about the need to establish a Jews for Jesus presence in Brooklyn. For years I ve been saying you can t really reach people in Brooklyn from Manhattan. The boroughs are fairly close in terms of geography, yet they are worlds apart. Most people are not going to build their (faith) community in Manhattan when they live in Brooklyn. For those familiar with the Bay Area, it would be like trying to reach Oakland from San Francisco. Karol has quite a few contacts to follow up from the Brooklyn campaign and looks forward to developing relationships there. She was enthusiastic about starting the new branch before the BYG grand finale, but the campaign has dramatically increased her desire to get started. Reports of a couple of encounters during campaign will help you understand why: I was driving in Brooklyn when the cell phone rang and I found myself talking to a 24-year-old Orthodox man, Shlomo (not his real name), who had seen some of our campaigners in the subway. He said his first reaction was a desire to beat them up... his second reaction was to want to spit on them. But his third reaction, which he acted on, was to call and find out what we are all about! We talked for about 15 minutes, by the end of which Shlomo was asking good questions. He wanted to meet with someone as he had many more questions. The following day the cell phone rang again; this time it was a 44-year-old Hassidic man who had received a broadside and was interested in knowing more. M said that he had been seeking to know Ha Shem all his life and wasn t finding what he was looking for from the rabbis. He had seen the Yiddish DVD about Jesus and it made sense to him. I asked him to read Isaiah 53 in his Yiddish Bible as we were speaking, and he could see that it was Jesus. It was very difficult for him to trust me with his phone number, but finally he did. Then he prayed with me to receive Jesus! I never had a burden to reach the Hassidic Jews of Brooklyn before the campaign probably because I never dreamed it was possible. And there are plenty of mainstream Jewish people to reach here, people to whom I already know how to relate. But now I have a vision and a desire to continue reaching the ultra- Orthodox as well. Going out with the Hassidic outreach team helped me to see the importance and the possibility of ministry to them. Reaching the Russian-speaking Jewish community will be an important aspect of the Brooklyn branch as well. A couple of our Russian-speaking missionaries from Odessa have remained in New York for an extended period to help establish a good Bible study. They are also helping our Russian-speaking staff in New York follow up contacts which came in from the overlapping Brooklyn and the Russian-speaking campaigns. Karol s final thoughts about reaching Brooklyn: We need to have a campaign in Brooklyn every year, maybe not as long or as big as Manhattan but there is plenty to do. Left: Williamsburg: a young Hassid takes literature from Sabrina after seeing our Yiddish Scripture banner (face blurred to protect his identity). The banner quotes Matthew 5:9 and was used in conjunction with another Yiddish banner that said: For more sayings of Rabbi Y shua, call Messiah.

9 JEWS FOR JESUS 9 All the Way from RussiaBy Rachel Soren Team leaders Leonid Vasserman and Gregory Furman Gregory Furman and Elizabeth Terini are both from the former Soviet Union, but have been part of the regular team of Jews for Jesus in New York for some time. This summer however, they were joined by 27 brothers and sisters from Russia and Ukraine in order to reach the largest population of Russian-speaking Jews outside of the former Soviet Union. That would be Brooklyn with a smaller but still sizeable concentration in Queens. Some of our Russian-speaking evangelists teamed up with the Queens campaign, but the rest spent their long summer days and nights proclaiming Jesus in Brooklyn, often at Brighton Beach, known as Little Russia by the Sea. They distributed broadsides, went door-to-door to visit with people and Above: Our Russian-speaking team sings the gospel in Brooklyn placed evangelistic ads in Russian newspapers. As a special outreach, there were showings of Chagall artwork (see Queens campaign on p. 3) one of which drew more than 100 people, of whom 64 Hassidic Jews: Who are They? Spelled Hassidic, Hasidic, Chassidic or Chasidic, over 300,000 such Jews reside in the New York metropolitan region. Though commonly referred to as ultra- Orthodox, Hassidic Jews (or pious ones ) most prefer to be described as fervently observant. (The term ultra- Orthodox also applies to the Misnagdim literally, opponents, who at one time had serious disputes with the Hassidim.) Hassidim ( im denotes plural) live in closed, tight-knit communities where Yiddish is the mother tongue. Men wear distinctive black garb including hat, long coat, pants, and shoes. White shirts and tzitzis (fringes) are worn beneath the coat. They have peyos (side locks) and beards. Hassidic women wear modestlength skirts or dresses with sleeves no shorter than the elbow. In the strictest communities, men do not touch or even speak to women outside of their family. The largest population of Hassidic Jews in the United States is in (nearly all Jewish) gave their contact information for follow-up literature and/or visits. The setting for ministry is different than in Russia and Ukraine, and the Chagall outreach is unique. But other than that, team leader Leonid Vasserman, who heads up our work in Odessa, commented that ministry in New York is not so different from ministry at home. The possible exception is that in Odessa, people are more likely to be apathetic, whereas here it seems most are either more hostile or else more open and interested in our message. That makes sense because Jews for Jesus has had a strong missionary presence there since we pioneered our work in Odessa in In New York, our Russian-speaking staff are few, and spread out between Brooklyn and Queens. So for many, as Leonid put it, Jews for Jesus are still a novelty. More than half of the 241 Jewish people we prayed with to receive Him were By Seth Richards Brooklyn, with multiple sects in their own neighborhoods, including Satmar Hassidim in Williamsburg, Bobover Hassidim in Boro Park and Lubavitch Hassidim in Crown Heights. The sects hold differing opinions on a variety of subjects, from the view of the state of Israel to the proper attitude towards secular people. Satmar Hassidism, the most traditional, maintains that no contact with the secular should be made. Lubavitch Hassidism, on the other hand, reaches out to secular Jews in order to bring them into the fold. Continued on page 10: Hassidic Russian-speaking. Our missionaries were also able to encourage some who already knew Him but were not yet bold in their faith. Yuliya Sokol reports, I met a young man named Hank who was like Nicodemus, who believed in Jesus secretly for a while. Hank confessed that he did not want to reveal his true faith to anybody. Suddenly, a hostile woman approached me and began yelling at me. I did not quite understand what she was saying, but to my surprise, Hank began defending me and not just me, but the Messiahship of Jesus. The Russian-speaking team encountered some of the more active anti-missionaries, particularly since Brooklyn is also home to many Orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews. Quite often, God used the antimissionaries to quicken the interest of Jewish seekers rather than driving them away. They d see the anger of those who are against us in contrast to the patience and perseverance of our missionaries and wonder about our message. In conclusion, Mira Gracheva from Moscow says, God is alive and wonderful. And here is one of His wonders. I was asked whether I wanted to stay longer in New York to follow up with the many Russian-speaking Jews we met this summer. I replied that either way, staying or going, would be fine with me. Then I had a dream: I was on the seashore and fish were jumping out of the water toward me. I realized that God wanted me to remain here to be a fisher of men during this season when the harvest is ripe. Then I Reaching the Ultra-Orthodox Campaign leaders Stephen Katz, Jonathan Bernd and Yoel ben David I will meet to talk more about this, but I want to meet with a woman. Normally our missionaries would conclude that a man who said this was not interested in the gospel. But this was the ultra-orthodox aspect of BYG New York and our missionaries were on new ground. Above: Campaign leader Leonid Vasserman engaged in conversation went to the beach and met Lyudmila, who was absolutely ready to receive Y shua. More confirmation of what God is doing at this time. Praise the Lord! Mira s dream also confirmed Gregory Furman s view of how this campaign differed from other NY campaigns he s experienced, at least in terms of the Russian-speaking component. It is unique because the harvest is always there but on this campaign we had the laborers. We went fishing and have caught a lot of fish. Above: Handing out broadsides at Brighton Beach Boardwalk By Anne Elfbaum Above: Some outlying Hassidic communities bus their commuters in and out of Manhattan daily Why a woman? the Jews for Jesus missionary countered. All my life men have told me what to do, what to believe and what to think. I m tired of it. And I have never had a meaningful conversation with a woman. I want to know what it is like. While this answer may not have Continued on page 10: Ultra-Orthodox

10 10 JEWS FOR JESUS COMING SOON! The Liberated Wailing Wall Continued from page 9: Hassidic In the 18th century, Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer or Ba al Shem Tov, founded Hassidism in Eastern Europe during a time of persecution. Rabbi Eliezer felt that Judaism had become too academic and he stressed the necessity of joy, prayer, and dancing in worship. These are still at the core of Hassidic beliefs. Even seemingly neutral activities such as sleeping or eating are seen as potentially pious. Hassidim believe that to achieve holiness one must literally adhere to the law. All foreign philosophies or ideologies are believed to abuse the sanctity of the mind and are sinful. The Liberated Wailing Wall (pictured singing at an outdoor concert during BYG New York), is Jews for Jesus mobile evangelistic music team. They present Jewish gospel music, testimony and drama to encourage and inspire believers and to bring truth to the hearts of seekers, both Jews and Gentile. Music can pierce hearts in a way not always possible with the spoken word. Don t miss the opportunity to hear the Liberated Wailing Wall and please, don t miss the opportunity to bring a friend who needs to know Jesus. Hassidim also believe that modern day tzaddikim (truly righteous men) are certain special rabbis who have complete authority in their community. Hassidim are to obey their particular rabbi (rebbe) implicitly. Breslov Hassidism explains, If a person is not bound to a true Tzaddik, all his devotions are nothing but twisting and turning and pretending to be something he isn t, as if an ape were pretending to be a man. Service of God is nothing without the true Tzaddik (Rabbi Nachman s Wisdom #111). For a startling understanding of the power ascribed to the Tzaddikim by this group of Hassidim, go to: Above: A Hassid rushing by takes a quick glimpse at Isaac Brickner s literature As you can imagine, the Hassidic communities have been largely unreached by the gospel. Belief in Jesus would not be tolerated... and to leave or be expelled from the community is unthinkable to many. No doubt others have witnessed to Hassidim, but as far as we know, our special outreach to this community was unique in both its scope and methodology. The Liberated Wailing Wall will be in the following states from the last week in August and through the month of September: Washington, Oregon, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. If you live in one of those areas and would like to pinpoint if they are going to be in a city or town near you, go to: Select Liberated Wailing Wall from the speaker drop down menu and then click the search button. Continued from page 9: Ultra-Orthodox indicated a deeply felt spiritual hunger, it was frank and deserved consideration. If we arranged for you to meet with a woman, she would still be accompanied by one of the men. That s fine, the Hassid nodded. As long as I can hear what she has to say. They are called rebels, the ones like this man who are not satisfied with the life ordered for them by the ultra- Orthodox community. They are willing Above: Anna Marie Misiti engaged in conversation with two Hassids to consider new ideas but they are wary. To consider Jesus as the Jewish Messiah is forbidden, and most see no reason to consider anything that contradicts the rabbis teachings. Even the rebels who question the rabbis authority know that they would lose family, friends and livelihood if they allowed themselves to believe the gospel. Therefore, arranging a visit with a Hassid is complicated. One person told our missionary, Go to such and such a subway stop. Wait on the far end of the platform. When the train comes, get into the third to last car. Don t look at me as I get into the same car. Get off at such and such a stop. Follow me to a place where we can talk. It sounds unreal. But it s not. Hassidim are viewed by the outside world as somewhat of an oddity because of their garb and their customs. To many Christians they appear exotically holy. But we found that there are those who don the garb, not because of deeply-felt spiritual convictions, but because it is required. Ultra-Orthodox does not mean ultra-holy. It means absolute loyalty to tradition and absolute allegiance to the rebbe. To those of us who have seen the nervousness of the rebels who dare to speak to us, it means being in a cult where some are struggling to think for themselves. When we decided to make outreach to this community one of the subcampaigns under BYG New York, we had no idea how to go about it. By Above: Hassid attempts to dissuade Orthodox man from talking to Susan Perlman God s sovereign grace we were approached by friends who wanted our help to distribute a Yiddish version of a film about Jesus and we sent the film to 80,000 Hassidic homes. We called people s homes to ask their thoughts about the DVD. We also received calls from many who took the initiative to respond. Stephen Katz, who has been a spokesperson for the team says, Some callers just wanted to chastise or correct us, but others were willing to discuss the issues. Many had destroyed the DVD in compliance with the rabbis edict, but a significant remnant (he smiles) watched it before destroying it. Some are waiting to watch it when the controversy dies down. People are still sending in their contact information. Most of the actual campaign work was a matter of walking through parts of the communities, sometimes for four hours at a time, engaging in one-on-one conversations. Stephen Katz was surprised by the number of substantial conversations they actually had with Hassidim more than 100. At the time of this writing they d had 18 visits with individuals and expected to have at least two more by the end of the week. We prayed that God would reach people in the community but we didn t know what to expect. We found that there are truly devout Hassidim, but there are also Hassidim who are agnostic or even atheists, and have, unknown to the community, ceased any number of Jewish religious practices. They maintain the outer appearance because they don t know any other way of life. Pray for our continuing efforts, and pray that God will make a way for those who want to leave the community to do so, so that they can learn about the Messiah Jesus freely.

11 JEWS FOR JESUS 11 Long Island Campaign... Jewish Dentist Meets the Great Physician By Anne Elfbaum Campaign leaders Susan Mendelson and Bob Mendelsohn (no relation except in the Lord) Nachas is a Yiddish word that denotes a joy that is somewhat parental in nature... as in describing one s pride and joy in a loved one. Bob Mendelsohn must have been feeling plenty of nachas over Jeff Burkes, the chief forensic dentist of NY County, whom Bob led to Christ in Burkes (who was called to help identify victims after the 9/11 terrorist attack) was one of the doctors who gave his testimony for a series of events titled, Jewish Doctors Meet the Great Physician. A man named Carl brought his Jewish dentist (to whom he d been witnessing for 15 years) to one of these events, hosted by Beth Emanuel Messianic Congregation. The Doctor of Dental Surgery, whose name was also Carl, found Jeff s testimony utterly convincing and the two of them, along with three others from the congregation, prayed as Carl received his Messiah. The Long Island campaign conducted several Jewish doctor events, but their mainstay in terms of day-to-day evangelism was beach evangelism. That was the number one activity for conversations and contacts, especially on those hot, sticky days when everyone wants to escape to the sand and surf. It was on one of those days at Jones Beach that campaigner Ester, from Brazil, led a 70-year-old Jewish man named Marvin to Christ. Marvin was with a Christian friend who had been talking to him about Jesus for years. What a blessing for that friend to see the fruit of his prayers and faithful witnessing. One plants, another waters, God gives the increase... and we all rejoice together. Weather did not always permit outdoor evangelism. On some of the rainy days, the teams stayed in to make phone calls. But that ministry turned out to be a little thin according to Bob Mendelsohn, and we realized that while it had seemed like a good rainy-day activity, we needed to be more intentional about calling in the evenings when people were more likely to be available to talk. The team also spent time doorknocking in various neighborhoods including Great Neck, where 10,000 Iranian Jews reside. There Bob met Ellen, a Jewish woman in her midtwenties who described herself as someone who was raised as a religious Jew, but is no longer practicing. Ellen had never heard of Jews for Jesus, and was very happy to receive the Jesus for Jews book. She gave her phone number so that one of our New York staff could arrange a follow-up visit. That same day, Bob knocked on a door and met Gretta, a Czech woman who, Below: Sergio Danon in conversation on the Jones Beach boardwalk when she was ten, moved to Ecuador. Bob said, We told her about the Jewish doctor event, and I said, Everyone has a right to tell their story don t they? Gretta agreed and invited my partner and me to come in and hear her story. This was the first time going door-to-door that anyone had invited me into his or her home. Once I knew she was from Ecuador, our conversation quickly broke out into Spanish. After taking a few minutes to tell her story, Gretta invited me to tell mine. When it was time to go, she was keen to have another visit. Please pray for our follow up with her. This was the first time that Jews for Jesus has made sustained and concentrated efforts to reach Long Island. There was much to learn along the way. Originally, the Long Island campaign leaders had split the group in two, because the Jewish population is dispersed over such a wide area. However, by the end of the second week, they united the team in Nassau County, where the Jewish population is most concentrated. One of the high notes of the campaign was the participation of many other Jewish ministries. For example, the joy of seeing Carl come to faith was deepened due to the fact that it was a joint effort with a local Messianic congregation. Bob says, The level of cooperation with other Jewish ministries on this campaign is unprecedented in my experience. We have congregations and other agencies to whom we are funneling contacts and with whom we are praying. The spirit of cooperation is huge and we are grateful. That s been a hallmark of the Long Island campaign. Unscramble the following words (all of which can be found in the Bible) and write them in the spaces provided in the right hand column. When you are finished, you should be able to find a column of letters that spells out the secret ingredient of Jews for Jesus victories. If you complete the puzzle WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE ANSWER KEY, send the solution, along with your name and address neatly printed, to Jews for Jesus, 60 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA We will send you, free of charge, a complete pack of all the new evangelistic broadsides that were used on this summer s New York BYG Finale! Example: LOSIDUTE GAINTERSLEV WEE GINK WORD SCRAMBLE = SOLITUDE = EVERLASTING = EWE = KING Scrambled Print unscrambled words below 1. Y E D D 2. W O R P E 3. T H Y M I L I U 4. C A G E R 5. P R A P E A 6. S T U T R 7. F A S T C I N Y 8. Y I S T E E W S E N 9. P E A C T E R E N N 10. T R O A C E R 11. C R A S N U S E A Answer on page 13 Cartoon *Goyim is Yiddish for Gentiles.

12 12 JEWS FOR JESUS Moishe s Musings One thing we hear on the streets and see in the Jewish newspapers is Jews for Jesus is deceptive. They are not Jewish, their founder is a Baptist and Jews for Jesus was founded and continues to be backed by Baptists. Geoff Robinson, one of our favorite Gentiles for Jesus, asked Moishe to comment on this. Here is what he said: I guess that some think that John the Baptist founded Jews for Jesus. But he was martyred in 29 A.D. and we weren t founded till 32 A.D. Seriously, I think some people bring up my denomination in a feeble attempt to play to the prejudices of those who wrongly believe that one can t be a Baptist and a Jew. I was born a Jew and I will die a Jew. But my kind of Jewishness goes beyond rabbinic religion (which most Jews ignore). Jewish is the kind of person I am. Baptist is my affiliation. I am not ashamed of either. Besides, if the Baptists founded Jews for Jesus, then we should be on the budget of some Baptist denomination. But the truth is that Jews for Jesus is too big for one denomination to support. We need 17 million dollars next year and no one group can afford that much. Most of our support comes from wonderful individuals of various denominational or non-denominational backgrounds. If people really want to know the story of A Steward for all Seasons By Above: Reggie Douglas Reggie Douglas is not happy that this was the final Behold Your God campaign. It is barely an exaggeration to say he has made a career out of these witnessing campaigns: beginning with the first BYG campaign in San Francisco in 2001, he s participated in 15 Jews for Jesus witnessing campaigns. Some might say he is a campaign junkie. People in Jews for Jesus, especially those who ve led campaigns, say he s a godsend. What brought Douglas from his home in Baton Rouge to Behold Your God campaigns in cities all over the U.S.? It all started at Community Bible Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where Reggie served as chairman of the missions board. We were dealing with missionaries all around the world, he says, and I remember looking at a map and seeing a void. We had no missionaries to Israel. I wondered, Who is bringing the gospel to Israel, and who is bringing the gospel to the Jewish people? That s where it began. how Jews for Jesus was founded, it is well told in a book by Ruth Tucker titled Not Ashamed, published by Multnomah Press. But basically, I realized that most evangelistic efforts among the Jews were carried out by well-meaning but easily ignored Christians. I studied the approaches of the Prophets and Apostles and realized the missing dimension was confrontation. By nature, most Christians are too polite and politically correct so that their proclamation is but a whisper when a shout is more appropriate. I expect that some people will continue to say that Jews for Jesus is deceptive, or that we were founded by Baptists, or put some other label on us because those who can t accept the message try to discredit the messenger. Those who want to put us in an evil light will do so anyhow. Fortunately, Jesus is the true Light. As long as He shines in and through us, as long as we can proclaim His goodness to others, I am content. Ruth Rosen It became a heavy burden for Reggie to find out what his church could do to reach Jewish people and he said it seemed like no one had any answers. Reggie officially retired from his job in 2000 to begin his second career... as a volunteer for Jewish evangelism. I began to look for organizations whose work was to reach Jewish people with the gospel, Douglas explained. A friend saw something about Jews for Jesus in a magazine and passed it on to me. I wrote a letter to them asking how I could be involved. In fact, I wrote to three Jewish missions. Jews for Jesus was the only one that answered me. The answer was that we needed help with our Behold Your God campaign in San Francisco. Campaigners (those who go out on the streets to witness during the outreach) are generally Jewish or have a Jewish spouse. Stewards (those who do all the behindthe-scenes work to keep the campaign going) do not need to be Jewish. Reggie Douglas was invited to come be a steward. Susan Bragg was the chief steward, Reggie recalls. She was wonderful. She became my mentor when I was asked to be the chief steward for the Chicago Behold Your God campaign just a few months after the San Francisco campaign. She walked me through the entire organizational process by phone. Reggie is not without organizational skills of his own. With a career in industrial technology, he worked as a maintenance planner, outlining repair procedures for crews of maintenance workers. He was used to creating lists of procedures for people to follow, and Continued on page 15: Steward Continued from page 7: BYG Hopes and Dreams BYG mistakes Experience is still the best teacher We had quite a learning curve during these five and a half years and of course we wish we could have known everything we know now from the very beginning. But problems and mistakes can be good instructors. In hindsight, I could have done a better job of scheduling these campaigns further in advance and selecting leaders sooner. I tried to give ample preparation time, but did not always do so. Most of what we did, from the SCC to the various campaign commissions, developed along the way out of necessity. We did not create a leadership training program until we were halfway through the five-and-ahalf year program, and then it was because others stepped up to meet that need. Another lesson: I didn t insist on unified reporting from the outset. As we began to collect reports on the campaigns, the inconsistencies in reporting made it difficult to evaluate the earlier campaigns. We came up with a program called the Olive Tree, which was designed to involve churches in the planning process for each campaign. We developed an elaborate system that asked a great deal from partnering churches and their members. We hoped that the churches would support our campaigns, not just financially, but also by having members of the congregation spend time in prayer and then attempt to set up opportunities for us to meet with and share the gospel with their Jewish friends. It would have been a great idea if it worked but with a few exceptions, most were not able to arrange those kinds of visits. That is not to say that we did not have churches involved in most of the campaigns. In fact, if it weren t for local churches most of these campaigns would not have happened. BYG Thanks To all the churches that made the campaigns possible! Most of the campaigns had what we called an anchor church that allowed us to use their facilities for our base of operations. We were continually amazed by the generosity of these churches. They not only provided facilities for us, they allowed us to use their telephones for evangelistic calling, their kitchens to prepare our meals, and often their pastors encouraged and ministered to the troops at our chapel services. Large and small alike, these churches were the backbone of many of our campaigns and we are grateful. Some of them withstood pressure from surrounding Jewish communities who felt that their friendship toward us spelled antagonism to the neighborhood. At times I was privileged to see the loving, gracious and godly responses that pastors of these churches wrote to local rabbis or other representatives who had complained. Their witness and willingness to stand with us showed their amazing commitment to the gospel and to the message of Romans 1:16. It would be difficult for me to list all of these churches without leaving someone out and I m not even sure they would wish to be publicly acknowledged. Still, I hope that folks from those anchor churches will see this, pass it on to your pastors, and know how very much we appreciate you. BYG Surprise Some of the best results aren t planned One of the biggest surprises in the BYG campaign was how it impacted our Co-Laborer in Messiah (CLIM) program. The Co-Laborer program is for volunteers who take a training course and receive a charter to represent our ministry in their own city or town. We have some 90 or more Co-Laborer chapters. Most of the Co-Laborers involvement has been limited to about ten hours a month, divided between seeing that our materials are available in local bookstores, representing us at church conferences, or hosting traveling groups like the Liberated Wailing Wall or individual missionaries on speaking tours. BYG provided opportunities and inspiration for many of our Co-Laborers to kick it up a notch in terms of their evangelistic participation. In fact, the Co-Laborers were key players in many BYG campaigns, particularly around the U.S. They served as stewards, campaigners, and in some cases, they stepped up to leadership levels in planning and in preparing for the campaigns. Many of our CLIMs are remarkably gifted in evangelism and have a passion for Jewish evangelism. Another blessing we hadn t fully anticipated was how BYG served as a catalyst for cooperation between other Jewish ministries and Messianic congregations. In some instances we had as many as seven different mission agencies and congregations shoulder-toshoulder with us in various BYG campaigns. This kind of inter-agency cooperation reflects a wonderful trend in ministry that I hope will continue. Continued on page 13: BYG Hopes and Dreams Left: This T-shirt, designed by Apple of His Eye (AOHE) ministries, founded and led by former Jews for Jesus missionary Steve Cohen, demonstrates their forthright methods. We were thankful to AOHE and many other fine ministries that joined with us throughout the five-and-a-half year BYG program.

13 JEWS FOR JESUS 13 Continued from page 12: BYG Hopes and Dreams BYG Finale The vision for the New York finale evolved over time. I didn t plan to have all of the staff together at the outset, but as BYG progressed, it became evident that this would not be just another typical campaign. New York is the mother of all cities, and certainly of all Jewish cities. Only recently has any city in the world rivaled the NY metropolitan area for Jewish population, and that city, Tel Aviv, is in Israel. Prior to 2006, we had 32 years of experience with campaigns in midtown Manhattan. As we began thinking of BYG New York and how it would differ from our annual summer witnessing campaigns, we realized that we needed to go beyond Manhattan. According to the 25,000-person guideline for Jewish populations, many communities in the greater NY area qualified for their own BYG. We wanted to focus on those specific geographic areas as though each was a separate campaign in and of itself. There were also unique challenges for ministry to the Russian-speaking, Hebrew-speaking, and Yiddishspeaking communities. Ultimately, we came down to having these nine separate campaigns: Manhattan, Brooklyn/Staten Island, Bronx/Westchester, Long Island, Queens, New Jersey, Israeli, Russian-speaking and Hassidic (ultra- Orthodox, or as they prefer to be called, fervently Orthodox). About 18 months prior to Behold Your God New York, we decided to send all the leaders on a special two-week probe campaign. Everyone came a year in advance to explore the areas where we hadn t conducted regular campaigns. We gathered together several times over those two weeks to learn from one another and to lay the groundwork for the grand finale. During that probe campaign, I realized that some of our best broadsides had been written in the 70s. While some of those broadsides are timeless, others were obviously outdated. I challenged our staff to produce 25 new broadsides in time for the BYG campaign. Our literature commission created many of the new broadsides, but a large percentage of our staff also kicked in their ideas and talents. Together we penned not 25 but 30 new broadsides, and were very pleased with the quality of the literature. Another strategy determined over 18 months prior to the grand finale was a pre-campaign outreach into the Hassidic communities. Jay and Lauren Bockisch had secured the rights to develop and produce a Yiddish version of a well-known film about Jesus. However, they did not have the funding to duplicate or distribute the film, and when they approached us, we agreed to partner with them to do just that via DVD. During the previously mentioned probe campaign, we had secured the addresses of approximately 80,000 fervently Orthodox homes. We mailed the DVD to these homes in advance of the campaign so that the responses to that mailing would be available to our missionaries during the campaign. As a bonus, this began to ramp up the media interest before the official campaign even began. We also settled on the slogan Jesus for Jews for a special media campaign to reach all nine groups. We produced an inexpensive, easy-to-distribute book by that title, with four testimonies from our staff. We created a direct mail piece offering the book (see left) to 440,000 Jewish homes two weeks in advance of the campaign. With the completion of BYG NY, by God s grace, we have fulfilled our mission statement to make the Messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue in many cities worldwide (see map on p. 2). That is a great joy. Of course, every person who had the opportunity to freely consider the gospel and every person who actually received Jesus as their Messiah during these campaigns is a source of joy. Who can place a value on one soul? Continued on page 15: BYG Hopes and Dreams Continued from page 6: Generation I also participated in the first Camp Gilgal on the West Coast, when it was all boys and we jokingly called it Camp No-gal. Then I was a camper at the East Coast camps... and a junior counselor in junior and teen camps. Question: And as you got older? Micha: The next option was to do Halutzim when I was 17. Josh Sofaer led the program. That was the summer that I got addicted to evangelism. Through Halutzim I became incredibly excited about witnessing campaigns. Question: But growing up as an MK you already knew something about these campaigns, right? Micha: Yes, I knew that was part of my parents world and I d passed out a few broadsides here and there with my dad... but experiencing it with other people my age was very different. It wasn t just his work, it was something that people my age wanted to do. Plus, I was totally blown away by the full-time campaigners investing so much energy in telling others about Jesus. I kind of knew that I d come back to do a whole campaign eventually. It might not be for everyone, but that summer I saw campaign as the ultimate way of serving God truly an all-out effort. Question: Do you remember your first sortie on Halutzim? Micha: Well, I am not the most outgoing person. So during my first few sorties (tract-passing expeditions) I didn t want to talk to anybody. One time I was standing at South Street Seaport, as usual, not engaging anybody in conversation. Suddenly an African- American lady walked straight up to me with her Jewish husband by the hand. She told me, He wants to pray to receive the Lord, but he needs to do it right now. So I led him in a prayer. Question: Wow! When did you know that you wanted to work with Jews for Jesus? Micha: I rededicated my life to God when I was 16 and ever since then I d wanted to go on staff with Jews for Jesus. I heard about the Jews for Jesus approved student program at Moody, and I heard they had good Bible teaching and a Jewish studies program that would help me toward missions. I didn t apply to any other school. I was accepted at Moody and to the Jews for Jesus approved student program. I graduated and came on staff. Question: What was your vision for leading Halutzim? Micha: I ve had so many people invest in my life over and over through all these Jews for Jesus programs and events. I can t imagine my kids growing up without that, so I definitely want to invest in other people s kids, too. I see these kids and I want them to be excited about being Jewish believers and excited about serving God. I m not an outgoing person but I have seen that God Above: Halutzimer Anne Mendelsohn is the youngest of Bob (director of Jews for Jesus Australia) and Patty s three children. uses me anyway, and I know that He can use anyone else who is willing. I want these kids to get excited and see that they can do it, no matter who they are and no matter what gifts they have. To me, the greatest encouragement about seeing Micha Cohen and his contemporaries in ministry with young people is this: he is not simply the next generation for our movement. He is already taking the lead to raise up the generation that will follow him. * Micha s parents, Steve and Jan Cohen, are part of Jews for Jesus past and present, having served many years on our staff during which time Steve led a number of our branches. Following their years with Jews for Jesus, Steve Cohen founded Apple of His Eye ministry, which has partnered with Jews for Jesus on numerous witnessing campaigns. Continued from page 6: Intern of the New York Times reporter who observed the scene. Frankly, I was afraid; perhaps more afraid of man (women can be intimidating, too) than of God. That night, I was overcome with guilt that I hadn t started more conversations. I was not excited about going out the next day. Was this guilt coming from Satan to discourage me, or was it God, convicting me to risk more for His sake? There is an inherent element of fear in putting ourselves on the line for God because we fear people s rejection. Even when we get used to the negative comments they still hurt, but not because they are personal. People s objections reveal their animosity towards the gospel and their rejection of God, which is painful for believers to see. Maybe this is the Lord s way of appealing to our emotions to convict us to proclaim the gospel. Even so, I couldn t deny my fear, or the fact that I felt ashamed to proclaim the gospel message. My adoption of the urban stare indicated my fruitless desire to fit in and be accepted, despite the message I proclaimed and the T-shirt I wore. I prayed that the Lord would give me courage to care more about pleasing Him than the people around me. Each successive day that I went out on the streets, the Lord answered my prayers and gave me peace, joy and courage. I discovered that a simple smile and nod went a long way. God gave me courage to engage people, even if they weren t exactly looking for conversation. One night I was finishing up a sortie in Coney Island when I noticed two young Hassidim. I told myself they were too young and avoided talking with them. (We don t talk to people under the age of 18 without parental permission.) Karol Joseph, the Brooklyn campaign leader, suggested I go find out their age. So I went to them and engaged them in a conversation. Who knows if they had ever heard the gospel before? My words did not cause them to instantaneously realize the truth, but that s okay. The Lord will do what He wants with the seeds that we planted. I stopped feeling guilty if I didn t end a sortie with a handful of contacts. I came to understand that God leads people to us, people He has chosen for us to engage. That doesn t mean that I don t have to put forth effort, but it is a great encouragement to know that God is in control. I have never before felt a stronger sense of His providence and direction. Furthermore, God has many people in New York. Some of them stopped to offer encouragement, and of course, I met many wonderful campaigners likeminded believers with whom I ve bonded as we ve done the difficult work of street evangelism together. Their encouragement, wisdom and experience truly blessed me. I rejoice because the Lord heard my prayers and challenged me by putting me in a situation where I had to rely on Him and seek Him fervently. He replaced my fear and shame with a joy that enables me to better serve and glorify Him. He provided His grace and sustaining power when I wanted to hide because, as He promises, He will never challenge us beyond what we can handle. I was truly blessed to be in a position to proclaim the gospel with Jews for Jesus in New York this summer. Solution to Word Scramble: The secret ingredient to Jews for Jesus victories: 1. DYE D, 2. P OW E R, 3. HUM I L I T Y, 4. GRA C E, 5. A P P E A R 6. T RU S T, 7. S AN C T I F Y 8. E YE W I T N E S S 9. R E P E N T A N C E, 10. C RE A T O R, 11. A S S U R A N C E.

14 14 JEWS FOR JESUS Reaching Israel from New York City By Rachel Soren Campaign leaders: Aaron Abramson and Daniel Goldstein For the first time in our history, an Israeli team of Jews for Jesus campaigned among the 200,000 Israelis in New York City. Clad in Hebrew Jews for Jesus T-shirts and carrying Hebrew broadsides and other gospel literature, they also placed gospel ads in local Hebrew newspapers, conducted surveys and used our specially designed Hebrew website. They phoned Israelis they met on the streets and had personal visits to discuss Y shua (Jesus). Above: Some members of the Israeli team We asked Daniel Goldstein to describe the difference between reaching Israelis here versus at home. Since people are outside of Israel, outside of their normal culture, they are more open to new things, Goldstein said. Also, it is a narrower slice of the population. Most Israelis here are young and just out of the army. They came to have a good time and to try to make money. In fact, one of the places we have met many of our contacts is called the meat-packing district, because of the businesses that were once located there. Today it is the neighborhood where everyone goes clubbing. Because so many Israelis hang out at clubs into the early morning hours, the Israeli team had a different schedule from the other campaigns. Rather than participating in the usual morning sortie (6:45-9 A.M.) they handed out tracts during the lunch hour, the evening rush hour and then at night from 7:20-11:30, with a 30-minute break. On Friday and Saturday nights, the younger ones went out from 10 P.M. till 2:30 A.M. with a half-hour break. Whether during the daytime or late at night, most responded to us with curiosity rather than an obvious spiritual hunger, Goldstein said. But God can use that curiosity, and there is often a hunger just a little deeper down. That was the case with Ma ayan (his name means waterfall ) who approached Valerie Bouaziz. She had a sign in Hebrew that said, Israeli? Free books! What kind of books? Ma ayan asked. Good books about Y shua, the Messiah. Valerie replied. They had a meaningful discussion and Ma ayan gave Valerie his contact information. Why don t you come to a BBQ we are having? Valerie offered, and we can continue the discussion. One of the guys on the team called Ma ayan a few days later to reiterate the invitation. The day of the BBQ came and the team was despondent as the skies were cloudy and rain was forecast. It was not a great day for a BBQ. Nevertheless, the team fired up the grill and prayed for the best. Three Israeli seekers turned up at the last minute; Ma ayan was among them. He was very open and had many questions. One of our Israeli staff, Shlomy, spent over an hour in deep discussion with him. Ma ayan prayed with Shlomy to receive the Lord and wants to meet up again to learn more about the promises of God. Throughout the month, several Israelis asked campaigners, Did you come all the way from Israel to tell us about Jesus?! to which they replied, Actually, yes! This opened hearts and Above: Shirley s sign offers free books to Israelis many agreed to have team members call them, not just in New York, but back in Israel. Reaching Israelis in New York has given us a great opportunity to learn new and creative ways to reach our people. It has taught us what they are seeking when they leave Israel. I think that will help to reach people back home, because they are seeking the same things, Daniel Goldstein concluded. Continued from page 8: Manhattan As always, Manhattan offered us an immense variety of witnessing opportunities, but this year our gospel proclamation was uniquely amplified through the media. Whereas the life cycle of a news story is normally three days, we continued to have coverage in Manhattan from the beginning (New York Times) to the end (the final day of campaign we had an interview with a Polish TV station). Above: Late night strategy session for members of the Israeli team Above: Sara Herr has a lively discussion with a Jewish woman on the Upper West Side of Manhattan But even without the news reporters and TV cameras, whether we were in Bryant Park or the Panic Room, on the right corner or the wrong train... or even conducting an all-campaign parade through Times Square on the very last day of BYG, God showed Himself faithful. We saw Him at work to make the Messiahship of His Son an unavoidable issue in Manhattan... and beyond. What s Cookin in Brooklyn by Seth Richards Have you ever read those restaurant reviews in the newspaper that apply adjectives to food that you never thought possible? I know that soul, purity, and synergy are not typically the first words that come to mind when I describe my potato salad. But my potato salad is usually nothing like that of world-class and New York Culinary Institute of America-trained chef Robert Krause of Krause Dining in Lawrence, Kansas. A typical meal in Krause s restaurant is pricey and for very special occasions only, but those lucky enough to be on the Brooklyn campaign got to eat Robert s cooking every day, for free. Krause, his wife Molly, their two daughters, and sous-chef Simon, donated their time to be the full-time chefs, temporarily closing their restaurant and earning no income. The Krauses even gave up spending vacation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to volunteer in Brooklyn for the month of July. Krause hadn t originally planned on coming to the campaign. However, after sharing a breakfast with David Brickner and attending church with him in San Francisco, he became convinced. The pastor spoke on taking risks for God and Krause knew that his participation was the Lord s will; something he doesn t say lightly. When I visited the Brooklyn campaign for a day, I was lucky enough to catch dinner with the team, and everyone raved. The food is awesome, one campaigner enthusiastically noted. The roasted chicken with fire-roasted tomato broth, new potato salad, and a Mediterranean salad with feta were prepared to perfection. Krause admitted that these were all simple, home-style dishes and he hadn t had the chance to really start cooking what he had planned. The night before, they prepared an oxtail stew and a fennel and orange salad. This is not home-style cooking à la Bob Evans. The night I visited, Krause was originally told to prepare a meal for 30 people, but he had to adjust his plans in order to accommodate 50 people. While this is no loaves-and-fishes event, it still shows how flexible and willing he is to serve more than just good food. Above: Robert Krause at work

15 JEWS FOR JESUS 15 Continued from page 13: BYG Hopes and Dreams BYG Future An announcement BYG, as you know, was restricted to cities outside of Israel. Many have asked why. Was Jews for Jesus overlooking the obvious for a reason? Following is the answer. We expect, by God s grace, to launch BYG Phase 2 a city-by-city outreach in Israel sometime in 2007 or early We are still praying and thinking through how best to do this. The challenge of campaigning city-bycity is much greater in Israel than it has been in most cities outside of the Land. We have already established a Jews for Jesus work in Israel with nine full-time missionaries stationed in the Tel Aviv area and possibly more in the near future. And in recent years, we ve seen God raising up a cadre of young Israeli believers in Jesus; perhaps the most promising future Jewish missionaries are among them. Added to this burgeoning group of young Israelis are other Jews for Jesus staff in various parts of the world who feel especially equipped to minister in the Land. I believe that God has given Jews for Jesus a vision of BYG Israel for such a time as this. Beyond BYG How you can pray for Jews for Jesus While Phase 2 is being planned for Israel, we have set three priorities for the overall ministry of Jews for Jesus now that Phase 1 is over. Our first priority is to strengthen the work of our existing branches and to develop stations that have sprung up through BYG. Behold Your God has, understandably, taken a great deal of our missionaries time and effort. We perhaps underestimated just how much, and now are eager to concentrate fully on the everyday work of our branches. Part of that everyday work includes five new Jews for Jesus centers established in conjunction with our BYG campaigns: we now have a branch in Boston, and outposts (fewer staff than branches) in Miami, Phoenix and Montreal. Miami and Phoenix are our newest works, having just opened after the completion of BYG s New York finale. The Brooklyn branch will officially open in January. Our next priority flows out of our biggest disappointment in BYG, the failure to recruit new missionaries. As the founding leadership of Jews for Jesus ages, it is time for a newer generation of leaders to step up to the plate and take greater responsibility in the future of the mission. This requires more young people coming in to fill their places in the role of general missionaries. To that end, we are committed to raising up 50 new missionaries in Jews for Jesus over the next five years. This challenge looms large for us. Like BYG, this goal requires us to meet other goals. An increase in our staff requires us to increase our support base. We cannot recruit new missionaries without helping them find new friends to raise their support. It can be difficult to fill the schedules for our existing missionaries to speak in churches (which is where we meet most of our new friends). We will need more opportunities for these speaking engagements if we are to sustain our current staff and add significant numbers. We believe that if God wants us to increase our staff, He will provide. But we need wisdom in how to do our part. Aaron Abramson, our Minister-at-Large and director of recruitment, is spearheading our recruitment efforts, but all of our missionaries are responsible to seek out and invest in potential new evangelists. We are asking God to enable us to meet that challenge, and we trust that our praying friends and supporters will help us to carry the burden. This is a major need and a major prayer request. A third area of focus for Jews for Jesus post-byg is to develop new materials and methods for outreach. We found for the New York finale that we could produce more new literature than we had thought possible. Creating and handing out 30 new broadsides was fun and exciting. We need to remember that and continue keeping our literature up-todate. We also found during our BYG campaigns that, in certain cities, we needed to try new strategies. We had some success in that area, but we definitely need to continue pushing the envelope to develop new methods. We need a burst of creativity and the Holy Spirit s energy to meet the challenges of the future. In December, we will gather once again in the upper room of our Shalom Hospitality House. We will pray and discuss new ways of reaching out. We will talk about how best to keep the simple tasks of reaching unsaved Jewish people through phone calls and visits at the forefront of our day-to-day branch work amidst the other challenges we face. Please pray that God will meet us as we continue pressing on to make the Messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to our Jewish people worldwide. It s not too soon to apply for next year s Summer Witnessing Campaign in New York City! Are you a Jewish believer in Jesus, years old, who wants to do something radical for God? As you ve been reading about our New York Behold Your God campaign, have you imagined what you might have done or said in some of the scenarios we ve described? Would you be willing to work harder than you ever have before, if it was so that people could know Jesus? Are you interested in meeting others who are willing to give up their summer to proclaim the gospel? If your heart is saying Yes! please e- mail your contact information to mal60@aol.com. Write Summer Campaign in the subject line. We ll send you an application. Maybe you are not Jewish but have lots of energy and want to be part of our witnessing campaign in New York next summer. If you like the idea of working hard behind the scenes to make it possible for campaigners to be out witnessing on the front line, maybe you can be a steward. Who knows, you might even get to meet Reggie! Please your contact information to mal60@aol.com and write Campaign Steward on the subject line. We ll send you an application. Continued from page 12: Steward that transferred well to his role as chief steward. He was the go to man to keep the Chicago campaign on schedule, from the meals, to the laundry, to packing the broadside bags, and troubleshooting various problems that can gum up the works. Reggie managed the stewards in Chicago very well, it seems, because before long he was asked to be chief steward for another campaign, and another and another. Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles... all the campaign leaders wanted Reggie for their chief steward. So on to Denver Reggie went. And to Los Angeles, St. Louis, Tampa, West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale. That s 13 Behold Your God campaigns (including this finale)... plus he has been on three regular New York Summer Witnessing campaigns. His favorite campaign? Philly. First of all, the entire operation was headquartered in the hotel, so there was no shlepping back and forth from the hotel to another facility (such as a church) for chapel, meals, etc. Reggie s team of experienced stewards needed little supervision. So when a number of campaigners became ill, Reggie stepped in as a campaigner, helping to pick up the slack. When his own team leader became ill, Reggie led the team. I got to do campaigning 50% of my time in Philadelphia, Reggie recalls. After the Philadelphia campaign, Reggie asked for copies of the training lectures. I felt that God called and equipped me to serve as steward, but I wanted to be prepared to witness as well. Even when I m not involved in sorties (tract-passing expeditions) like I was in Philadelphia, I m wearing a campaign T-shirt. People ask questions when they see those shirts. I ve had many good conversations on my way to the grocery store. To further his training, Reggie took an intensive training course to become a Co-Laborer in Messiah. He is part of a core of Jews for Jesus volunteers and he Continued from page 7: Bronx/Westchester Messiah he said, Yes. He had never, however, prayed to receive Him and was ready to do so that night. After giving his life to Jesus, Steve asked if the prayer he d just said was to be prayed daily. This is not an unusual question since religious Jews recite daily prayers from the siddur (prayer book). But I put it in a different context for Steve. I told him that when I asked my wife to marry me, she only had to say yes once. Tonight, I told Steve, you said Yes to God. Though is training up more volunteers in Baton Rouge to help reach the Jewish community there. When asked if the Grand Finale Behold Your God campaign was different from all the others, Reggie observed that having two of the nine campaigns operating under the same roof (the Israeli and Manhattan teams) made this a busier campaign than the others. The one roof is over the Jews for Jesus mid-manhattan office, a seven-story elevator building which was the headquarters for the aforementioned Behold Your God campaigns. Campaigners are not allowed to use the elevator during the campaign so that it will be freed up for the stewards, who are constantly bringing in food that needs to go up to the third floor kitchen, bringing down laundry to the basement, or bringing up bags filled with hundreds of our broadside tracts. Even so, Reggie rarely used the elevator. The stairs are good exercise he says, and with all the exercise, I can eat whatever I want. The campaigns are intense spiritually, mentally and physically. Reggie stays spiritually fit by spending the first hour of each day meeting with the Lord. On a campaign schedule, that means getting up at 4:30 to pray until 5:30, with half an hour remaining for him to get ready before beginning his 6 A.M. workday. As a result, he says, I go through my day with peace. If a problem arises, I see Him [the Lord] work it out. Campaigns are an all-out effort meant only to last for a season. With several dozen of them over the last five years, no wonder many of the Jews for Jesus missionaries were, in a sense, relieved that this is the last of the Behold Your God campaigns but not Reggie. It s a little sad for me, he said, looking down. When asked if he thought he d be back for next year s regular Summer Witnessing Campaign in New York, he brightened. That would be wonderful. you ll want to renew your love and commitment to Him, you are His. Fruitful evangelism doesn t always refer to reaping. There is fruitfulness and there is seedfulness, commented Amer. Turning over the hardened ground and planting seeds is indeed fruitful evangelism. The ground is softening in these parts, Amer concluded. It is softened by tears, such as those Steve s son shed for his father. And it is softened by the multitude of prayers.

16 16 JEWS FOR JESUS Above: Jhan Moskowitz talks to a man in Tarrytown in Westchester County Right: Heather Blecher at a favorite noontime hangout: Bryant Park Above: Eitan Beer on a Manhattan sortie Above: David Brickner handing out broadsides on the Upper West Side of Manhattan Far Right: These stewards came all the way from Denmark! Right: Halutzim team members in the intense heat Below: Need we say more? Right: All nine campaigns joined to march through Times Square on the last day of Behold Your God New York Below: Rahel Landrum engaged in conversation with a Brooklynite NEW! Teaching and Testimony from Jews for Jesus Christ in the Feast of Tabernacles The Feast of Tabernacles has great historical AND prophetic meaning for all God s people. One day the Feast of Tabernacles will be celebrated by all the nations of the world (Zechariah 14:16). You can start your celebration now! Author David Brickner guides you through a study of: Tabernacles in the Old Testament Tabernacles in the time of Jesus how the festival is celebrated today what s foretold for the end times Moody Publishers, 175 pp. $13 A Rose from the Ashes Rose Price has held audiences captive with her riveting story for decades, but not until now has she unfolded her life story so completely. The true story of how this Holocaust survivor came to believe in Jesus and became a spokeswoman for reconciliation before huge audiences in Germany is a drama of epic proportions yet it is personal enough to speak into the life of any reader who has struggled with issues of forgiveness. Purple Pomegranate Productions, 172 pp. $12 Name Street City/State/Zip Phone If paying by credit card: MasterCard Visa AmEx Card No. Exp Signature Please make check/money order payable to: Jews f r Jesus, 60 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA Phone: (877) 4-Messiah Fax:(415) Web: All proceeds go to the evangelistic ministry of Jews f r Jesus. item Item Name Qty Code Price total Christ in the Passover BK268 $13 A Rose From the Ashes BK270 $12 Subtotal Add 15% for shipping and handling California residents add 7.25% sales tax Donation for Jews for Jesus ministry TOTAL ENCLOSED WMSO146