In the 1960s, most of the resources available for Jewish outreach were outdated and only engaged a small segment of the community. Moishe Rosen sought to change that, and his efforts caught the attention of the media. “Jews for Jesus” began as a slogan coined by the media, but it soon turned into the rallying cry of a movement. By 1973, Rosen made it the name of our 501(c)3 organization.
The concept wasn’t new—after all, Jewish people had been believing in Jesus since, well, Jesus! But this small cadre of Jewish men and women was so passionate about the life-altering hope they’d discovered in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, that they began employing new and creative ways to share the news on the streets and college campuses of San Francisco.
Our organization has since expanded globally and now operates in more than a dozen cities around the world. Jews for Jesus was founded to innovate new approaches to effectively engage Jewish people with the Jewish Messiah, and that same passion and dedication that ignited us then still drives us today; the methods may change, but the message does not.