stories of orthodox jews
Our Stories | Orthodox Jews
Rabbis have often built a wall around Jesus—but certain truth can break even that boundary. Read how these followers of traditional Judaism discovered the One of whom the prophets wrote.
I grabbed the New Testament from where I had hid it in the cupboard and opened it. It happened to open to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter one. I was completely overwhelmed when I read the very first sentence: “This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham.”
Ceil Rosen, wife of Jews for Jesus founder, Moishe, had a unique Christmas experience, leading her to consider Jesus seriously as the alternative to religious Judaism or atheism.
Below the surface were the unanswered questions, “Who am I? Can I know God? What follows death? Can I have the positive assurance that my sins are forgiven?”
He asked if I wanted to pray. I replied, “Sure, where’s the prayer book?” “You don’t need one,” he explained. “Just talk to God from your heart.” I folded my arms across my chest, looked upwards, and said, “God, I don’t know who You are. But I’m tired of doing it by myself, so You have a go.”
Josh Leon lives and works in the Orthodox community. One of the things he enjoys most is plowing through the rabbinic texts and discovering what he believes is more evidence that Jesus fulfilled the messianic expectations of his Jewish people.
As a young rabbi, Isaac Lichtenstein (1825–1908) reprimanded a young man for showing him a Bible containing a New Testament, took the book from him, and put it on a corner shelf. Thirty years later Lichtenstein opened the book… and it changed his life.
I was only five years old and had no idea what was going on as our family crowded into my grandparents’ living room on the day before Yom Kippur. I can still remember how my father picked up a chicken, tied up by its feet, and swung it over our heads, the chicken cackling and…
Yoel and Adel Ben David live in San Francisco. Now both aged 30, they married when they were 20 and were involved in the Hasidic Breslov movement. Here is their story. I was born in Israel and lived there for the first three years of my life,” Yoel begins. “My father worked for a hotel…
The Jewish prophets gave some very specific information about the Messiah not often discussed in synagogue.
(in German; Leipzig, 1895). Out of print, but available at some large libraries or through inter-library loan. One of the most intriguing eras in Messianic Jewish history is the 19th century, and one of its more fascinating characters was Jehiel Lichtenstein (1827-1912), author of perhaps the most unusual commentary ever written on the New Testament….
In a small town in eastern Hungary, young Leopold Cohn lost both of his parents at the age of seven. His life became a struggle for existence, and he learned to trust in God with all of his heart. At 13 he decided to study to become a rabbi, and when he graduated from the…
