Volume 21 5 MESSIANIC JEWS and the HOLOCAUST Jewish movie star Natalie Portman recently questioned the prominence given to Holocaust education at the expense of other mass murders. I think a really big question the Jewish community needs to ask itself, is how much at the forefront we put Holocaust education, Portman said. Holocaust survivor advocates were quick to respond to Portman s comments. Sam Dubbin, the attorney for the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA, said that today s problem is not too much Holocaust education, but growing ignorance and indifference to the realities of the Shoah. None of us can ever understand what it must have been like to go through the Shoah, or emerge from it when so many loved ones did not. We are obliged to remember the Holocaust, and we are obliged to speak out and take action against the hate and atrocity in our world today. According to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, American Jews say that remembering the Holocaust is the most essential aspect of being Jewish (73 percent of respondents rated it higher than the eight other choices). That is why, 71 years after the end of World War II, we are publishing another Holocaust remembrance edition of ISSUES. This time we focus on Jewish believers in Jesus who met the same fate as other Jews in the Shoah. Rachmiel Frydland (with glasses, front row, center) and Reverand Philip Malcman (top right) with other Jewish believers in Jesus at a home Bible study in Warsaw, Poland, in the late 1930s. Of this group, only Rachmiel survived the Holocaust. (Photo courtesy of Vera Stoehr.)
Jewish Followers of Jesus Who Perished In The Shoah by Elliot Klayman Due to a variety of influences, including missions to the Jews, persecution, charismatic figures and a post- Haskalah* orientation, many Jews in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries professed a belief in Yeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah. This new breed was known as Hebrew Christians, or Christian Jews. Most saw themselves as converts to Christianity, but others maintained their Jewish identity and culture. One such community dwelled in Kishinev, Romania, founded by Joseph Rabinowitz, considered the father of modern Messianic Judaism. That whole community (save one person) of Yeshua believers perished in the Holocaust. 1 For the most part they are nameless, but when it came time for their death, they faced it with faith in eternal life in their Messiah Jesus. It is reputed that by the 1930s more than 200,000 Jews in Europe had embraced Jesus. 2 For the most part these were baptized Jews who joined established historical churches. Hugh Schoenfeld, in his History of Hebrew Christianity, notes that 97,000 Jews joined the Church in Hungary, 17,000 in Austria, 35,000 in Poland, 60,000 in Russia.... 3 Some, however, maintained a hold on both the Christian and the Jewish worlds. For example, an association of 15,000 on the eastern border of Poland near Vilna formed a Jewish Church that believed in the deity of Jesus of Nazareth. Its adherents studied both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, while adhering to many rabbinic regulations. 4 After the Holocaust only a very small remnant of Hebrew Christians remained. One such believer, Rachmiel Frydland, a Holocaust survivor, in his book, When Being Jewish Was a Crime, preserves some of the memories of those he knew who perished in the Shoah. 5 Yocheved was the daughter of Reb Gershon, a well-known Hebrew teacher in Ruda-Huta, in Eastern Poland, near Ukraine. Rachmiel shared about Yeshua with her, and her interest grew through teachings she received from a Christian family. She was baptized, and Rachmiel reported: I liked Yocheved very much. I knew that if we could get married, we would have true fellowship together.... Our pastor, Mr. Barchuk, was willing to take the risk and give us the blessing. Thus one night after midnight with only a few people present... the ceremony was performed.... Yocheved joined me in my parents home after a few days, but she could stay only a short while. She was taken from her district to do slave labor on a nearby farm that the S.S. had taken over, and so we began our marriage in separation. 6 Yocheved escaped from the labor camp and joined Rachmiel and his family, before she and a girlfriend were caught and killed by drunken policemen while the two women were praying. 7 Rachmiel s only comfort was that both had come to know their Messiah before their deaths. Young Stasiek Eisenberg, a new believer in Yeshua, was in the Warsaw ghetto before its destruction, and in fellowship with a few other Jewish believers there. Once he was arrested because he was late for work and for that infraction was condemned to die. While in his death cell he wrote on the wall his favorite Polish hymn: Let your hearts be always joyful. Praise and thank Him without fears. For our Father in the Heavens, On His arm His children bears. Joyful, joyful, always joyful, Day by day His sun doth shine; Full of beauty is the road to Heaven, God and Christ** are always mine. The German officer in charge of the cells arrived with a Polish interpreter and wanted all of the writings on the wall to be translated into German for him. Upon hearing part of the translation, the officer asked, Who wrote this? Stasiek, fearful, came forward and admitted it. The officer, recognizing the German version of the hymn from his Sunday school experience, set Stasiek free that day. 8 Stasiek also told Rachmiel (who surreptitiously entered the ghetto to comfort the remaining Jewish believers in Yeshua) that Joseph Sommer, the great Hebrew Christian rabbinics scholar, and the family of Mr. Weiss, a missionary 2 ISSN 0741-0352 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. 2016 EDITOR IN CHIEF: SUSAN PERLMAN EDITOR: MATT SIEGER DESIGN / ILLUSTRATION: PAIGE SAUNDERS JOIN US AT FACEBOOK.COM/ISSUESMAG
for the Church s Ministry among Jewish People (CMJ), on Serinov Street, all starved to death in the ghetto. Stasiek recounted the sad story of the Hebrew Christian Schuman family wife, son, two daughters, a son-in-law and a small grandchild who were all killed by the cruel hands of police Nazi sympathizers. Mr. and Mrs. Sendyk, Jewish missionaries, and their son, were also exterminated, going freely to, as they believed, a better resurrection (Hebrews 11:35). By the time Rachmiel entered the ghetto, the only Hebrew Christians remaining were Eisenberg and Mr. and Mrs. Wolfin. Mr. Wolfin was an outstanding preacher with the CMJ who was learned in rabbinic writings. The Wolfins were faithful to the end of the destruction of the ghetto, undoubtedly dying with the Shema on their lips: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. 9 Stasiek wanted to know whether it was right for him to join the Jewish underground ghetto fighters and whether he could carry cyanide to take in the event he was caught. Rachmiel, himself a new believer, had no answer for him. Stasiek refused to join Rachmiel in his departure from the ghetto, preferring instead to endure sufferings and death with the ghetto Jewish community. 10 Hebrew Christian David Fogel, whose family had lived in Germany for almost half a century, and his wife and two daughters were trapped in Germany, unable to emigrate because of red tape. Finally, they were granted permission to come to England, but it came too late. War broke out and the emigration channels were closed for them. 11 Imprisoned by the Nazis, on the way to a concentration camp in a cattle car, they could be heard singing: So take my hand, dear Lord, and lead me on until my life is ended and then beyond. I cannot walk alone, dear Lord, not one small step. Wherever Thou goest or stayest, I will go with Thee. 12 David, his wife Dora, and one daughter, Hedwig, perished, because they were Jews in the wrong place and time. The Central Database of Shoah Victims Names connected to Yad Vashem in Israel has a huge database of the Jews who were murdered. 13 The Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center connected to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 14 also contains records. Those records do not distinguish the Hebrew Christians from other Jews, but lump them all together as Jews who perished. Rachmiel s parents, both who came to believe in Yeshua before dying in the camps, are listed simply as Jews who were killed, as were the famous Hebrew Christian Victor Buksbazen s believing parents. They lived as Jews and died as Jews, without distinction. Overdue is a specific record of those Jewish believers in Yeshua who died at the hands of Hitler and his henchmen. Other than some raw statistics, we just do not have archival specifics. Yet, perhaps it is best left undone. After all, the Hebrew Christians were not condemned because of their faith or religion, but because of their genetics. It was a racial extermination, based upon the number of grandparents, not on the basis of one s beliefs. Jews of all walks of life proceeded to the chambers of death together, and all are counted as part of the six million who perished in the Shoah. May their memories be a blessing among the mourners of Zion. *The Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, was an ideological and social movement in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe. ** Christ comes from the Greek word for Messiah, which in Hebrew is Mashiach. Endnotes 1. Daniel F. Jonathan Nessim, The Hebrew Christian Shoah and its Soteriological Legacy, in Kesher 26 Summer/Fall 2012): 23. 2. Ibid., p. 24. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Shoah is a Biblical Hebrew word that means burnt offering. It has reference to the olah daily offerings in the Temple that were burnt up entirely. The term is appropriate to describe the millions of Jews who perished in the ovens of the Nazi camps in Germany during World War II. The Greek equivalent is Holokauston, from which we derive the English, Holocaust. 6. Rachmiel Frydland, When Being Jewish was a Crime (Cincinnati, Ohio: Messianic Publishing, 2008), p. 113. 7. Ibid., pp. 120, 128. 8. Ibid., pp. 143-44. 9. Ibid., pp. 142-45, 147. 10. Ibid., pp. 145, 147. 11. Lydia Buksbazen, They Looked for a City (Bellmawr, NJ: The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, 1955), pp. 224-25. 12. Ibid., p. 225. 13. http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search.html?language=en 14. http://www.ushmm.org/remember/the-holocaust-survivors-andvictims-resource-center ISSUES is a forum of several Messianic Jewish viewpoints. The author alone, where the author s name is given, is responsible for the statements expressed. Those wishing to take exception or wishing to enter into dialogue with one of these authors may write the publishers and letters will be forwarded. Email: editor@issuesmag.org jewsforjesus.org UNITED STATES: P.O. BOX 424885, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94142-4885 CANADA: 1315 LAWRENCE AVENUE #402, TORONTO, ON M3A 3R3 UNITED KINGDOM: 6 CENTRAL CIRCUS, HENDON CENTRAL, LONDON NW4 3JS SOUTH AFRICA: SUITE 36, PRIVATE BAG X14, PINEGOWRIE 2123 AUSTRALIA: P.O. BOX 925, SYDNEY NSW 2001 3
Leon Rosenberg: the Tragedy of the Beth El Congregation Leon Rosenberg was born in 1875 in Czarist Russia, the first child of Rabbi Eleazar Rosenberg and his wife, Gali. Leon was educated to follow in his father s rabbinical footsteps. He was a zealous and brilliant student. His father, Eleazar, was strict and austere, telling Leon, Never forget whose son you are or the high calling to which you were assigned and dedicated. 1 His mother was sweet and more tactful, encouraging Leon in his studies of the Holy Scriptures. While Leon was in his teens at rabbinical seminary, he received in the mail a package from a friend containing a book in Hebrew, the Brit Hadashah the New Testament. Leon began to read it in secret but was found out and persecuted by some zealous fellow rabbinical students. His parents were more understanding of his insatiable curiosity. But Leon had to move to another town to study under different rabbis. Over the next two years, Leon met a few Jews who were either secret or open followers of Yeshua (Jesus). At the age of twenty, Leon came to believe that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, and he made a public profession of his faith. He was expelled from the Jewish community and had to flee across the border, eventually ending up in Hamburg, Germany. Because of the reproach brought upon them by Leon s new faith, the parents of Leon s wife, Fanny, who was pregnant with their first child, took her away to another province. But within the Leon Rosenberg year, she and their new daughter, Gail Eugenia, reunited with Leon in Hamburg. Soon afterwards, Fanny also came to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. The Rosenbergs had six children. Their only son, Philip, died at age one and a half. Their daughter Lydia died of the flu at age twelve. The Rosenbergs wanted to tell their Jewish people about Yeshua. They first worked as missionaries in Krakow, next in Warsaw, then in Odessa, where they stood with their Jewish people during the pogroms of 1904-1905. Many of Odessa s Jews came to the Rosenberg home, expecting that Leon would mark his house with Christian icons and crosses as 4 protection from the massacre, as other non-jewish residents had. When they saw none, they urged Leon to put them up for his own protection. But Rosenberg refused, saying he would trust in God. Some of the Jews remained in his house; others returned home. Rosenberg and the other Jewish believers in Jesus who gathered in his home read Psalm 91 and prayed. The frenzied mobs passed the Rosenberg home many times during the next three days, but never touched it. On the fourth day, the pogrom suddenly stopped. In 1928 the Rosenbergs moved to Poland, a new country emerging from the devastation of World War I and home to four million Jews. They rebuilt a bombed-out factory in Lodz as a mission and congregation. They erected a sign with the name Beth El (the House of God), reminiscent of the renaming of Luz by Jacob after he saw the angels of God ascending and descending the ladder to heaven (Genesis 28:10 19). The Rosenbergs added a medical clinic, day school and orphanage. When the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, Leon wrote: We began to prepare bomb shelters, but soon realized that in our case, with so many workers and children, it would be wiser to claim the 91st Psalm and rest in the shadow of the Almighty. Though death and destruction reigned in many places, we were spared for the time-being, and God in His infinite mercy concealed from us the not so distant future. 2 The congregation grew, as Jews, including Jewish believers in Jesus, fled to major cities, including Lodz. To support his growing flock, Leon traveled to America to seek financial support. He would be separated from his wife for nearly seven years. Fanny Rosenberg, her daughter Helen and Helen s husband, Samuel Ostrer, remained with the Beth El congregation and the orphans. Although Fanny survived the war, she had to live through days and nights of horrors the concentration camp deaths of Samuel and Helen, six of the mission workers, most of the orphanage workers, and most (about 300) of the congregation. 3 In addition, the Nazis killed over 200 children from the orphanage. Fanny wrote: (Leon Rosenberg, continued on page 8)
Bazyli Jocz: Believer and Shoah Martyr by Theresa Newell In 1900 in the small shtetl of Zolse (Zelse) not far from Vilno (Vilnius) in Lithuania, the local milkman was not unlike Tevye of Fiddler on the Roof except that he came to believe that Yeshua (Jesus) was the Messiah of Israel. This is how it all happened. This Jewish milkman named Johanan Don was married to Sarah. They had a daughter named Hannah who had been injured in a fall. Johanan, being a good father, sought medical help that he hoped would prevent his teenage daughter from being permanently crippled. Reluctantly, he went to a medical mission clinic in Vilnius for help. The doctor in charge was Dr. Paul Frohwein, a man the Jews of the area called kind of a Jew, and yet not a Jew. While Hannah was being seen by Dr. Frohwein, Johanan picked up a small black book on the table. It was a Hebrew Brit Hadashah, a New Testament. He read for the first time on the first page that Yeshua was the son of David, the son of Abraham! The doctor encouraged Johanan to take the book home with him. Every day Johanan got up very early to read this book and soon realized he had discovered his Jewish Messiah! In the meantime, pogroms broke out in his small village. Johanan moved his family into Vilnius, where he found a small group of believers in Yeshua near their house. There he was baptized. Not long after, Johanan died. To make ends meet, his widow Sarah took in a boarder a nice Yeshiva student of the Vilna Gaon.* His name was Bazyli Jocz, a serious, keen and thoughtful student. One day he was reading in the prophet Isaiah. He came to a passage that he did not understand in chapter 53, so, naturally, he took the matter to his teacher. Who is the prophet speaking about? he asked. Bazyli was shocked when his teacher bopped him on the head and called him names. Don t ask foolish questions. Just study! he said. Everyone in Vilnius knew of the odd Jew, Dr. Frohwein, so Bazyli went to ask him about whom the prophet wrote. The good doctor told him. And so Bazyli came to believe also that Yeshua was his Jewish Messiah. But he went on with his studies at the yeshiva and told no one of his new belief until he realized that he wanted to marry Hannah, his landlady s little lame daughter. As they spoke one day, Bazyli said to Hannah, I have a secret. She asked what it Jakob Jocz was. He told her, I am a Jew who believes in Yeshua as the Moshiach of Israel. Hannah in turn said that she too had the same secret! She told him that her father had been a believer. He had told her never to forget Yeshua. And so Bazyli and Hannah were married. In 1906 their first child was born, a son they named Jakob. During World War I, Lithuanian Jews suffered terribly. On one occasion a nun denied young Jakob relief food because he was Jewish, even though the family members were believers in Yeshua! Revolution was the order of the day in Russia, with the Bolsheviks gaining the upper hand and borders being challenged in all of the Eastern European countries. Bazyli was drafted to work in the barracks, serving Polish soldiers. In 1920 Bazyli began as a staff worker with the Church s Ministry among Jewish People (CMJ) in Warsaw, the unofficial Jewish center for Russia s six million Jews. Later Jakob joined his father to study for three years at the CMJ training center in Warsaw. In 1932 Bazyli and Hannah moved to Lwow, Poland, to work at the CMJ station there. Jakob had been studying in Germany and England. After his ordination and his marriage in England, he returned in 1935 to Poland to take a post in the Warsaw station his parents had left. Jakob s wife, Joan, returned to England in late May 1939 to prepare for the birth of their first child. Jakob remained in Warsaw, but in mid-summer he received an urgent message that called him back to England. The main speaker for a large church conference had become ill, and Jakob was called to fill his place. Before he could return to his post in Warsaw, Germany invaded Poland on September 1. There was no going back. After the war, Jakob learned that his father Bazyli had been betrayed to the Gestapo (Bazyli Jocz, continued on page 8) 5
Theresienstadt: The Same Fate by Kai Kjær-Hansen Editor s note: Theresienstadt serves as a window into what happened to followers of Jesus who were of Jewish descent during the Holocaust. It is estimated that as many as ten percent of the Jews in Nazi Germany believed in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. And they suffered and went to their deaths along with their fellow Jews. This article is excerpted from a paper by Kai Kjær-Hansen, With Hans Walter Hirschberg and Arthur Goldschmidt in Theresienstadt. 1 Theresienstadt, about 40 miles north of Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia, is the town that Hitler had donated to the Jews and which in Nazi propaganda an was described as a spa town where e elderly Jews could retire. From the end of 1941 to the beginning of 1945, more than 140,000 Jews were sent to this ghetto, which for about 88,000, became a transit camp to the death camp Auschwitz- Birkenau. Approximately 33,000 died in this ghetto. When it was all over and the ghetto had been liberated on May 8, 1945, there were about 19,000 survivors. Theresienstadt was governed by a council of Jewish elders; but although there was a certain degree of selfmanagement, it did not mean that they had freedom to do as they pleased. It meant that they were expected to make things work and to carry out the German orders with all the compromises that involved for the council itself. Among those who died in Theresienstadt, or were deported Red triangle patch worn by Czech political prisoner Karel Bruml in Theresienstadt; Standing room ticket for an opera performed on April 21, 1945, in the Theresienstadt ghetto. (Images this page courtesy of the U.S. National Holocaust Memorial Museum.) from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz or survived the horrors in Theresienstadt, were individuals who were Christians of Jewish descent. It is tempting today to call them Messianic Jews, but this would not correspond with their self-perception. Like most other Jews in Germany they saw themselves as Germans; unlike most other German Jews they were Jews who had embraced the Christian faith, some by conviction, others for pragmatic reasons. But in Theresienstadt they shared the fate of Mosaic Jews. In the eyes of the Nazis, their Christian faith did not obliterate their Jewishness. Hans Werner Hirschberg, who had been a judge in Berlin, arrived at Theresienstadt on February 10, 1944. He survived and later wrote: One tenth of the Jews who had been interned there belonged to a Christian confession. Some were Protestants, some Catholics. Among these Jews, there was a group of Evangelical Jewish Christians from Holland, four hundred in number that distinguished themselves. They even had a Jewish Christian pastor with them. Many of our church members had, although they had been baptized, never really considered being followers of Jesus until they came to Theresienstadt. But here, under the influence of God s word, many of them were truly converted. Jews who had been Christians in name only became true Christians. Many Mosaic Jews and Jews who had no faith whatsoever found Jesus and were saved in Theresienstadt. I am one of the few survivors from the concentration camp in Theresienstadt. Most of my brothers went home to be with the Lord. But my Saviour saved me out of this camp so that I might proclaim the wonderful things that He performed among those who were in the valley of the shadow of death. Arthur Goldschmidt s parents had converted to 6
Christianity in 1858. After Goldschmidt, born in 1873, had to resign his post as a judge in Hamburg in 1933, he devoted himself to his hobby as a painter. His wife Kitty, who was a baptized Jew, died in June 1942. One month later Goldschmidt was deported to Theresienstadt. Here he founded an evangelical congregation where he preached and administered pastoral care. He survived in the ghetto. Before his death on February 9, 1947, he wrote down an account of the evangelical congregation in Theresienstadt. Here are a few glimpses from the account that was published in 1948. On the first Sunday in the ghetto, Goldschmidt and another man get together in an attic and read the New Testament which he has brought. The word gets about, and others join them the following Sundays. No more than twenty persons can assemble without permission. What was I to do? He realizes that the administration was not likely to appreciate the formation of a Christian congregation in a Jewish town, and without the consent of the Jewish council of elders he could not proceed. Goldschmidt continues: So I turned, nonetheless, to Mr. Edelstein, who was then the leader of the Jewish council, and described the state of affairs to him. When he was informed of the fact that an evangelical congregation had already been founded, he was astonished but also full of understanding. The good God is ultimately the same, and to him, Edelstein, it is the same in which way he is honoured. Both sides realize that the room where the Mosaic Jews worship cannot be used. On October 18, 1942, they get the first and semi-official recognition of the congregation as a room with electrical light, used as a variety theatre and a lecture hall, is made available for them by the council of elders. And the congregation grows. Between 150 and 200 attend the services; at the festivals there are even more. Goldschmidt does not hide that, from time to time, there were some difficulties with the council of elders. But the following words are nevertheless remarkable: In retrospect it must be admitted that this administration of what was intended as a pure Jewish society, which naturally would see a Christian congregation as a foreign body, in general has been very obliging. Here is an example: Christian German Jews cannot celebrate Christmas without a Christmas tree, which is difficult to come by. Again in Goldschmidt s words: Finally the SS permitted us to have a small tree, which would be decorated by the women; not even candles, a much desired rarity donated from all sides, were missing. But then listen to how Goldschmidt continues: The last year the Christmas tree was cynically forbidden by the SS man who had to make the decision. But then, fortunately, the Jewish administration saw to it that an artificial tree with inserted branches and with multicoloured electrical lamps was made for the service!... and what is more, Goldschmidt continues, the administration, or more correctly the leader of the Jewish council, Dr. Murmelstein, even organized a gala performance for the Christian children with a children s choir singing Christmas carols, children performing a small fairytale play and a magician a man in the camp that had been deprived of his profession showed his tricks. Endnotes Images of Theresienstadt now (top photo by Susan Perlman; other photos by Annette Cooper) 1. Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism Eighth International Conference Proceedings (Lake Balaton, Hungary 19-24 August 2007, 23 August 2007), http://lcje.net/papers/2007.html 7
(Leon Rosenberg, continued from page 4) Though my deep consolation was in the Lord, the Good Shepherd of those dear little lambs, whom we were privileged to nurse for Him, preparing them for life and death for time and eternity yet, I suffered unprecedented agony for their sake. I then understood the cry of Naomi I rather say, Thy will be done. 4 Fanny also wrote of her rescue in 1945: On the 17th of January of this year, the enemy planned to destroy all Jewish men, women and children in our community who were still alive, but early in the morning of the same date, the Russians came and the enemy fled. This was a miracle. If they had come but two hours later, none of us would have survived. 5 In August 1946, Fanny was able to immigrate to America and reunite with Leon. She wrote: After all the tragic and irreplaceable losses, what a blessing and joy it was to be reunited not only with my husband, but also with two of my still living three daughters and their families, for whom the Lord also opened the doors into this country and our open arms. 6 The work the Rosenbergs began in Eastern Europe continued after World War II until the Communists stopped it. Today their legacy continues through the American-European Bethel Mission, with outreaches in Germany, Ukraine, Israel and Britain. In May 1967 Leon Rosenberg quietly died in his sleep at the age of 92. His wife, Fanny, followed him one year later. Endnotes 1. Vera Kuschnir, Only One Life: Biography of Leon Rosenberg (Santa Barbara, CA: American European Bethel Mission, 1996), p. 43. 2. Ibid., p. 272. 3. Ibid., pp. 299 300. 4. Ibid., p. 301. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., p. 310. (Bazyli Jocz, continued from page 5) and shot. Other members of his family had perished in Hitler s death camps. Only Jakob, his wife, his younger brother and his mother all believers in Yeshua survived Hitler s Final Solution. Before the Nazis invaded Poland, Jakob edited the Yiddish journal Der Weg. In 1940, the suffering of his own people prompted him to publish his book, an appeal to the churches, entitled Is It Nothing to You? In all his writing, notes Arthur Glasser, Jocz never forgets the long history of anti-semitic hate and contempt that was nourished by the clergy. 1 Glasser adds, When the synagogue asks in all seriousness: Yes, you Christians have Jesus, but where is the redeemed world, the kingdom he reputedly inaugurated? Jocz then turns to the church and says, You owe the synagogue an answer; where is the evidence of God s grace to be seen in this generation? 2 During the war years, Jakob headed CMJ s work in London and also did graduate studies at the University of Edinburgh. His doctoral dissertation, The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, was published in 1949. This was the first of six major works. In 1956 Jakob and his family moved to Toronto, Canada, where he became president of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance (IHCA). He was invited to join the faculty of Wycliffe College, where, from 1960 until his retirement, he occupied its chair of systematic theology. He died in August 1983. * Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman (1720 1797), known as the Vilna Gaon, was the foremost leader of non-hasidic Jewry of the past few centuries. Endnotes 1. Arthur F. Glasser, The Legacy of Jakob Jocz, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, April 1993, p. 68, http://www. internationalbulletin.org/issues/1993-02/1993-02-066-glasser.pdf 2. Ibid., p. 71. Watch an interview with Messianic Jewish Holocaust survivors, and read the poem, Where Was God When the Six Million Died? as well as the amazing stories of survivors Maria Weinstein and Ruth Gottlieb. What about other Jewish people who have been challenged with this same issue? Check out ShoutOut to find out. Jewish journeys of faith, streaming now at jewsforjesus.org/shoutout 8