Dr. Mitch Glaser

I want to thank you for your generous prayers and support during 2018. I also want to share some of what God has used our global staff to achieve for His glory. We could not have done it without you! You are a vital part of our ministry team. 

Our Staff 

Our staff, of course, is at the heart of all that we do for the Lord in reaching Jewish people with the gospel. Whether that is in the United States, Israel, Paris, or Russia–our staff, both missionaries and administrators, are our most precious assets. Our dedicated missionaries share the gospel day in and day out – heart to heart, person to person, and home to home. Our administrative workers diligently produce the published materials we use in sharing the gospel and care for all of the logistical concerns of ministry – connecting us with churches, making sure that our finances are in order, maintaining our properties, and so much more.  

I want you to know how much we love our staff and are committed to treating them generously. 

I am hoping you will help me show His love and care for our staff by providing an extra financial bonus during the holidays. Some of our missionaries are also under-supported and need extra help to receive their full compensation. Would it not be a phenomenal surprise to some of our missionaries if, by God’s grace, we have enough money to make up for the funds they were unable to raise throughout the course of the year? 

Together we can make a huge difference in the lives of our staff families! 

It is because of our staff that we maintain missionary operations in sixteen countries outside the United States, and twenty-plus cities within North America.  Your Mission to the Jewish People is now represented in communities amounting to 98% of the Jewish population across the globe. In fact, if you really want to understand our strategy, just follow the Jewish population numbers that we provided and you will see that we and our workers follow the Jewish population.  

I am sure it does not surprise you to learn that our largest staff outside of the United States is located in Israel! 

Here is a quick overview of what God is doing through our various ministries. 

Centers 

We establish Messianic outreach centers around the world – a base of operations in the midst of a large Jewish community. It is from these centers that missionaries go out to reach Jewish people for the gospel in their communities. We also invite Jewish people to attend Bible studies, fellowship meetings, evangelistic lectures, and discipleship programs held at our centers. We have two major centers in New York City, one center that we own in Israel and another that we rent in the heart of a very-unreached Tel Aviv suburb. We also have centers in Chicago, Florida, Buenos Aires, London, and Toronto, and we plan to continue to establish centers that we either own or rent in the midst of major Jewish population centers as the Lord allows. 

Congregations 

We also continue to plant messianic congregations – I like to describe these congregations as churches in a minor key! Of course, they are much more than this! We want the Jewish people we reach to have a comfortable, culturally sensitive place to worship and grow in the faith. One of the greatest objections Jewish people have to the gospel is that when a Jewish person accepts Jesus they are often no longer considered Jewish. This is why it is so important for Jewish believers to gather each week and to also celebrate the Jewish holidays as fulfilled in Jesus.  We are committed to establishing evangelistic communities in Jewish areas.  

We maintain Messianic congregations everywhere, from greater Los Angeles to New York City, Washington DC, London, Israel, Paris, Toronto, and many other cities. 

Digital Evangelism 

We constantly use the web and social media to reach Jewish people with the gospel. For the last six years we have been working together with some very talented young people to produce evangelistic testimonies of Messianic Jews.  

We now have almost ninety testimonies of Jewish believers in Jesus from every walk of life.  

You can go to www.Ifoundshalom.com and watch these testimonies. And when you do…you will join literally millions of people who have viewed these testimonies and received a profound and penetrating witness for Jesus. Now Christians sharing the Lord with Jewish friends are able to send them a link to an appropriate testimony of someone with a similar background. We also maintain the www.Isaiah53.com website which is reaching thousands upon thousands of Jewish people with the truth of this great Old Testament chapter which predicts the death and resurrection of Jesus in great detail.  

So many folks are responding in the United States, Israel, and other countries to the message of Jesus that we are overwhelmed with “follow up” and now, in partnership with those who have a similar vision, are producing an online video-based discipleship series based on the Sermon on the Mount.  

There’s no doubt that the digital universe is the new Mars Hill of the 21st century! 

Campus Work 

We are very excited about reaching out to university campuses. We are about to begin a new ministry this fall because of the generosity of a Christian foundation. We are looking for four qualified Jewish or Gentile young men who will live in the same apartment adjacent to New York University – the university with the largest Jewish student body in the United States… thousands of Jewish students who need the gospel. Throughout the year, we maintain a witness on campuses around the country and minister through book tables, equipping Christians on campus and sharing the gospel student to student! But, we feel know we need to dig deeper into the major Jewish campuses and reach Jewish people in a new way.  

If you know of a young person who is in a gap year either between finishing college or graduate school and would like to take a year and be part of this ministry to Jewish students, then please let us know.  

Israel 

It is said that the Jews are like everybody else– only more so! This is so very true of the Jewish people as God especially chose the Jewish people to be His bridge of redemption to a broken and sinful world (Genesis 12:1-3). God still has His all-powerful hand upon the Jewish people and you can see this in the ways that certain prophecies are fulfilled before our very eyes. Almost fifty percent of the world’s Jewish people have now returned to the land of Israel. Beginning in Ezekiel 36:22, the prophet predicts that the Jewish people will return to Israel in the last days in unbelief, and it would be in Israel that God would pour His Spirit upon the Jewish people and they would become spiritually alive. Today, there are almost 7,000,000 Jewish people living in Israel, the Hebrew language is revived as a common tongue, and more! The next step in God’s plan is for the Jewish people to come alive spiritually. And believe me, we are already beginning to see this!  

There are now more congregations and more believers in Israel than since the first century. Your Mission to the Jewish People continues to share the gospel with elderly Russian Jews and Holocaust survivors, and conducts children’s camps each year with hundreds of Jewish children, the majority of whom are not yet believers.  

We see many Jewish people come to faith in Jesus in Israel today!  

Other Countries 

God is not only working in Israel, but in many other countries with large numbers of Jewish people. For example, for the first time since World War II, we have established a Messianic congregation in the heart of the Jewish sector in Paris. France itself has more than 700,000 Jewish people! In Argentina, we have two beautiful centers and one of them is home to a dynamic and growing Messianic congregation.  

God is doing great things in the Ukraine. Many younger Jewish people left the Ukraine but there are still hundreds of thousands living in this very difficult place.  The Ukraine is replete with both economic challenges and ongoing antisemitism. We now have a coordinated effort among almost twenty Messianic congregations, helping them with training their leaders, doing relief work among elderly Jewish people who are unable to move to Israel, and more.  

We baptized dozens of Ukrainian Jewish people in 2018. 

There are also some ministries that have developed that we had not planned on! For example, tens of thousands of Jewish young adults, after their service in the Israeli army, travel to New Zealand to “sow their wild oats.” Unlike the former Israeli soldiers who travel to India, where we also serve, those who tour New Zealand are more seriously searching for spiritual truth. Our New Zealand team purchased a youth hostel in the heart of the major tourist area on the South Island of New Zealand, and almost 2,000 young Israelis stay there each year. Through barbecues, hummus nights, and Sabbath dinners we are able to share the gospel gently and sensitively with these young Israelis.  

Many of them return to Israel and are now in contact with our Israeli staff members with whom they are able to continue the relationships built in New Zealand. Already a number of them have come to faith in Jesus. 

Children’s Camps 

God has given us a great burden for reaching children – especially from mixed marriages between Jews and Gentiles. Each year, we see dozens of these young ones coming to faith in Jesus. I believe the future is bright because the Lord is working so wonderfully among these kids. 

Training Programs 

Our training programs are fruitful for both young believers and for those who are very serious about ministry. Each year we conduct a mentoring retreat in Israel and have been doing this for more than a dozen years. We are in the midst of training fifteen to twenty couples who are serving the Lord in the Holy Land, but are in great need of additional training.  

We are also conducting training conferences for Russian Jewish leaders, and in September 2019 we will have our fifth conference to be held in Kraków, Poland with more than one hundred fifty Russian-speaking Jewish congregational leaders who are desperate for more biblical and practical ministry training. 

We also continue our primary training program called the Charles Feinberg Center for Messianic Jewish Studies in Brooklyn.  

This is a partnership between Chosen People Ministries and Biola University/Talbot School of Theology. We offer a fully-accredited seminary degree designed to equip believers for ministry among the Jewish people. We have had twenty graduates, and there are almost twenty students currently enrolled in this great training program. We are so grateful for the partnership with Biola as the classes are offered at an incredibly reduced price so that, at the end of the training program, these new missionaries and future congregational leaders are able to begin their ministries without debt.  

If you know of anyone who would like this kind of training, in the heart of Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn at our Feinberg Center, please let us know. We are always open to whomever God is leading to be part of this program. 

Short–Term Missions 

We conduct a number of short-term mission outreach programs throughout the year. We offer two programs in Israel, and usually one in New York City each summer. This summer, during our two-week Shalom New York outreach, we hope to have 125 participants for each week, in celebration of our 125th year as a ministry. We also send short-term outreach teams to reach Israelis in New Zealand and India, and we are now working on gathering a team to go to Nepal. We hand out tracts on the streets, conduct surveys among religious Jews, do puppeteering in parks, music outreaches, health fairs on the very Russian Brighton Beach boardwalk in Brooklyn, and offer evangelistic training along the way through talks given by some of our most experienced staff members. We pray and worship the Lord together and learn more about how to reach Jewish people with the gospel. It is our hope that those who participate will bring what they learn back to their local communities to reach their Jewish neighbors. 

Focus on the Haredim 

The old-style Orthodox Jews as well as the Hassidic Jews are very similar in their theology and culture. As a result, we put these two groups together and refer to them as Haredim, which is a word that means reverence or fear. There are approximately 300,000 of these very precious folks in New York City, and many hundreds of thousands in Israel, with others located around the globe. According to recent and respectable surveys of the Jewish people, one day within the next few decades the Haredim might become the largest segment of the Jewish community. They are not secularizing at the same rate as most other Jewish groups.  

Lately, we are seeing a few Haredim coming to know Jesus, and some of us believe that more are coming.  God is at work! We are planning a training conference on this topic in Brooklyn for January 2019. If you are interested in attending, please let me know. 

Our 125th Anniversary 

I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that we will begin our 125th year as a ministry among Jewish people on January 1, 2019. Chosen People Ministries began when Leopold Cohn, a Hungarian rabbi, came to faith in Jesus on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1892 through the witness of a twenty-one-year-old Presbyterian missionary to the Jewish people who was preaching the gospel to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe at a mission church on the Lower East Side.  We continue to embrace Rabbi Cohn’s vision for reaching the Jewish people with the gospel!  

There is so much to learn about the history of Chosen People Ministries and I hope that you will allow us to send you the autobiography of Leopold Cohn, entitled To An Ancient People.  

Yet the story is just beginning, as we draw closer to that future glorious day when “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25ff). We are headed towards a Romans 11 future. The Lord will remember His promise to His ancient people and turn their hearts to Jesus…at least all who are alive at this future time.   

But there is so much to do today, as God has prepared a remnant of Jewish people who, like me, will respond positively to the gospel, if we will simply tell them about the Lord (Romans 1:16, 11:11)! 

Joyfully in Jesus, 

Mitch 

Shalom in His grace,

I know you would agree with me that God is faithful! The hymn writer had it right when he wrote, “Great is Thy faithfulness, oh God my Father. There is no shadow of turning with Thee. Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not…great is Thy faithfulness Lord unto me.”

Faithfulness is not something God does: Faithfulness is an essential part of His character—it is His nature!

We celebrated Israel’s 70th anniversary this year (2018), and next year, beginning in January 2019, we are going to celebrate the 125th year of Chosen People Ministries (which means we are much older than the modern State of Israel!). There have been trials and challenges along the way for Israel and for us, but we are both here today because God is eternally faithful.

The prophet Jeremiah assured the Jewish people that, although they would go through hard seasons and at times come close to destruction, God would preserve them for all time!

“Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; the Lord of hosts is His name: ‘If this fixed order departs from before Me,’ declares the Lord, ‘then the offspring of Israel also will cease from being a nation before Me forever’”
(Jeremiah 31:35-36).

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is the verse that inspired the hymn writer to pen the majestic hymn mentioned above.

The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I have hope in Him.” (Lamentations 3:22-24)

The prophet Jeremiah, who was disheartened to witness his beloved city of Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians, most likely wrote the book of Lamentations. Life can be hard, and most of us know what it is like to be disappointed by the circumstances of life. Some of us have experienced the destruction and dismantling of our lives—just like what happened to Jerusalem. However, Jerusalem endured because of the faithfulness and promises of God! You and I are still here as well, and that is why we can smile and praise God for His everlasting faithfulness.

The timeless text of Lamentations 3 teaches us that God is faithful by nature. That means that God cannot make a promise that He cannot keep. God cannot break His word and cannot be unfaithful.

The Hebrew Terms Describing God’s Faithfulness

There are three wonderful terms that are used in the Hebrew Bible to describe the faithfulness of God. One is the Hebrew word “chesed” (loving-kindness), which refers to God’s unending loyalty to the people He chose. According to Jewish tradition, the Lord went from place to place, and people to people, offering the commandments. They all declined for a variety of reasons. But when He came to the Jewish people, they said, “Yes—sounds good for a variety of reasons!” Most of them are quite humorous! However, we know that this was not the biblical story. When God wanted to bless the world, He created a miracle in Sarah’s womb, and a child (Isaac) that should not have been born, emerged.

The Jewish people are not simply the chosen people. The Jewish people are God’s especially-created people, created to be His bridge of redemption to a dark and broken world!

The next word is “rachamim” (compassion), which draws attention to God’s tender mercies. The word has the same root as the word for womb and implies a nurturing or motherly feeling. God’s compassion will never cease because it is His nature and covenant commitment to the Jewish people. He is loyal and never breaks a covenant. He is tender and compassionate, and finally Jeremiah says, “For his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).

The Hebrew word “emunah,” translated faithfulness, literally means “firmness” or “steadiness” or even “steadfastness.” Moses describes the character of God over and over again in the book of Exodus, and he mentions His faithfulness. In Deuteronomy 32:4, the Lawgiver sings, “The Rock! His work is perfect, for all His ways are just; a God of faithfulness (emunah) and without injustice, righteous and upright is He.” Moses is an accomplished lyricist and expresses his understanding of God’s unending faithfulness in a glorious song of praise!

We see that God is faithful in bringing the Jewish people back to the land of Israel after 2,000 years of exile. In Ezekiel 36:24 we read, “For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land.” The return of the Jewish people, and the establishment of the State of Israel seventy years ago, are further signs of God’s covenant faithfulness to His chosen people. God is faithful because He cannot be anything but—He is steadfast and firm in His commitments to the Jewish people and to each of us! And He will also keep His promise to turn the hearts of the Jewish people to Jesus the Messiah.

“For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved…” (Romans 11:25-26).

As sure as the Jewish people are back in the land, as sure as Yeshua died and rose from the grave, that’s how certain I am that one day the promise of Romans 11:25-26 will be fulfilled because God is both a promise maker and promise keeper!

I am looking forward to the many events we have planned to celebrate our 125th year of ministry. We are blessed with a great history because He is faithful. What began as a small seed is now in seventeen countries and dozens of cities in North America, with more than one hundred staff members making the gospel known to the Jew first and also to the Gentile! We have a lot to celebrate!

Blessings, and I hope to see you involved with our 125th year activities as we celebrate God’s faithfulness to us and to His chosen people!

Your brother in the Messiah,

Mitch

Shalom in the great name of Jesus! Happy almost-Thanksgiving!

I am looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving later this month. I know it is not a biblical holiday like Passover or the Day of Atonement, but it does help us focus on developing an attitude of thankfulness to the Lord for all His blessings! In fact, Thanksgiving is a lot like the Feast of Tabernacles.

As Moses wrote, “Now on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days” (Leviticus 23:40).

There are many, including me, who believe that the early Puritans viewed themselves as the “true Israelites,” America as the Promised Land, and thought they were celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles (which is a fall holiday).

So…I suppose we can view Thanksgiving as a Jewish holiday!

I believe the Lord wants us to learn how to be thankful, and to teach and model this “attitude of gratitude” to our children and grandchildren.

THANKFUL FOR OUR STAFF

As the Apostle Paul wrote so beautifully,

“We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints” (Colossians 1:3-4).

I am most grateful to the Lord for our staff. 

I am inspired and encouraged by them, and I admire their dedication and sacrifice for our ministry among the Jewish people. They experience considerable rejection and opposition and yet, with hearts of love, they still bring the gospel daily to Jewish people who are not yet believers.

Thank you once again for your continued faithfulness to the Lord and to the Jewish people. Also, please don’t forget to pray for our under-supported missionaries.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you” (Philippians 1:3).

With a thankful heart,

The topic of this month’s newsletter is the fault line that separates Judaism and Christianity and creates a Grand Canyon-sized chasm between Jewish people and Jesus. Must this be? The highly sensitive and difficult question we will address is whether or not the message of Jesus that is conveyed through the Gospels is intrinsically antisemitic. This is a question that most Christians would never even think to ask. But every Jewish person knows that this assumption is one of the primary underlying reasons for the rejection of Christianity by Jewish people. Allow me to explain further.

Jewish historian Solomon Grayzel wrote, “The history of Judaism and Christianity is written in blood and punctuated in violence.” It is understandable why Jewish believers are reluctant to become involved with the church. From childhood, we are taught that Christians (the people in churches!) are the enemies of the Jewish people. The church was supposedly the institution responsible for persecuting our ancestors. Many of us find it painful to step inside a local church, whatever the denomination. How can we enjoy the company of those who inspired the murder and destruction of our people? Am I exaggerating? Perhaps, but if you were brought up in a Jewish home like mine, my words should at least ring with familiarity, if not authenticity.

Is there any truth to the accusation that Christians persecuted Jews? Of course there is! And I will not qualify that statement by placing quotation marks around the word Christian. If I say that all those who mistreated Jews were Christians in name only, I am arrogantly dismissing early church leaders such as Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine, not to mention Reformers such as John Wycliffe and Martin Luther. Painful as I find it, I do not have the authority to write these individuals out of history, much as I might like to.

To deny the past would be foolish. To forgive these men posthumously would be presumptuous because they never asked for forgiveness. Yet, to think that they characterize what God intended the church to be would be foolish and useless.[i]

I still remember when I was first considering the message of Jesus. I was only 19 years old, living far away from home, where I had been raised in what I call a non-practicing Orthodox Jewish home. This might sound a bit odd, but many Jewish people are raised in one of the various denominations of Judaism—Orthodox, Conservative or Reform—and are not especially religious. But, for what it’s worth, when I practiced Judaism I did so as a modern Orthodox Jew. Truthfully, at this time in my life, it was more a case of Orthodox Judaism being the Judaism I preferred not to practice. I was far from God, although I was open to all sorts of religious and spiritual ideas – except Christianity!

Because I knew virtually nothing about the tenets of Christian faith, my major objections to the message of Jesus were not theological or biblical. They stemmed from the deeply ingrained cultural and historical memory I referred to earlier. I was raised in New York City and lived in a very Jewish community. I knew some Christians at school, mostly ethnic Catholics who didn’t seem to like Jewish people! At least that was my impression. In fact, everything I knew about Christianity was negative towards the Jews. I also believed that those who perpetrated the Holocaust were Christians and I knew that my grandparents had moved to the United States to get away from the Christians that were persecuting them in Russia.

So, you might ask, what was it that brought me over the line to faith in Jesus? How did I reconcile who I was as a Jew with belief that He was the Messiah?

Briefly, there were three reasons why I ultimately became a follower of Jesus. First of all, I met Gentile Christians who loved the Jewish people. They might not have known much about Judaism, but they showed God’s love to all. They especially enjoyed meeting Jewish people, as they were avid Bible students and understood the importance of the Jewish people and Israel in the plan of God.

Also, I began reading the story and words of Jesus in the Gospels because of my encounters with these Gentile Christians, who eventually helped two of my best friends come to faith in Yeshua. In what seemed like a miracle to me, I found a New Testament in a phone booth in the middle of a campground in the Redwood Forest…a long story! As I began reading the New Testament, I immediately felt a deeply emotional conflict. On one hand, I felt so guilty reading this book, which I thought was the inspiration for millennia of antisemitism. Yet, on the other hand, I was unmistakably drawn to the compelling words of Jesus. On top of that, my close reading led me to the surprising conclusion that the Gospels were not antisemitic as I had thought. In fact, they seemed so Jewish!

However, what really put me over the line was the person of Jesus Himself. I just fell in love with Him. He was strong, bold, courageous, truthful, and so deeply spiritual. His words grabbed hold of my heart in ways that I cannot even explain. It became obvious to me that He was the Messiah and the fulfillment of all that my Jewish people hoped for through the centuries. I found myself asking how Jesus could possibly have inspired hatred of the Jewish people when He was so clearly Jewish, with a great love for His people. And I confess, this is a dark mystery I do not fully understand to this day. As He said at a moment of intense rejection by the Jewish leaders of His day, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling” (Matthew 23:37).

And so I was left staring at the chasm between myself as a Jewish person, feeling the burden of thousands of years of intransigence towards Jesus, while at the same time wanting to embrace Jesus as my Messiah. Without, I hope, sounding trite, for me the bridge was actually Jesus Himself. He reflected the depths of spirituality I was longing for but could not quite find within the Judaism in which I was raised. I did not want to reject Judaism or who I was as a Jew, but I desperately wanted to know God intimately and personally. Jesus became my Messiah, Redeemer, and my Bridge to my heavenly Father. I finally understood what He meant when He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me”(John 14:6).

Coming to faith in Jesus as my Messiah was the most difficult and most profoundly wonderful decision I ever made in my life. I now follow Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah and join arms with any others who do the same, although I try to be clear-sighted about the failings of people and institutions. There remains much to lament on that score.

I hope that you enjoy the rest of this newsletter as we look at some difficult New Testament passages that have been interpreted in an antisemitic way throughout the years. We are going to try and help you know to how to handle these texts and understand them within a first-century Jewish context—which is the key to unlocking their meaning. I also asked my friend Dennis to share his story, and I hope you enjoy it. It is my prayer that you will reflect upon what you read and ask God to show you if Jesus is indeed the Jewish Messiah for all.

Mitch Glaser

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[i] Direct quote from the following article written by Dr. Mitch Glaser. https://jewsforjesus.org/publications/havurah/havurah-mm88-02/the-egg-and-miriam-or-a-post-easter-assessment/

SUMMER MINISTRY

We had an exciting summer of ministry. First of all, we enjoyed celebrating the 70th anniversary of the modern State of Israel with 600 fellow believers from 14 countries who joined us in Jerusalem! We had various Israeli teams lead us in worship each evening after touring all day. Then we listened to some great messages on the topic of Israel’s restoration to the Land. It was wonderful!

Back home, we held another Shalom Brooklyn outreach with dozens of Chosen People Ministries staff and volunteers “hitting the streets” in New York City to talk with Jewish people about the Lord. We especially focused some of our efforts toward reaching very religious Jewish people, and we are continuing to learn how to approach these precious people. We also held two children’s camping programs in the United States (East and West Coast) and a few in Israel, as well.

I was especially blessed by this year’s Living Waters retreat, where we spent a long weekend with 30 Israeli young adults between the ages of 18 and 35. Lawrence Hirsch, our Australian director, taught through the book of First Peter. It is exciting to see this new generation of young Israelis who love the Lord growing in their faith and desire to reach their fellow young Israelis!

FALL FEASTS

The summer was fruitful, but now, along with Jewish people across the globe, we are turning our hearts and minds to the fall festivals of Israel according to the Hebrew calendar. These festivals include the New Year (Rosh Hashanah), the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot).

The first holiday we celebrate is Rosh Hashanah, as the Bible instructs in Leviticus 23. The Hebrew name of the holiday, Yom Teruah, literally refers to the sound the trumpet makes.

“Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘In the seventh month on the first of the month you shall have a rest, a reminder by blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation’” (Leviticus 23:24).

In Jewish tradition, the holiday became known as the New Year and usually refers to the beginning of the civil year for the Jewish people. However, according to the Bible, Passover initiates the new year and is described as the beginning of the “religious year.” You would have to understand thousands of years of Jewish tradition to figure this out!

Allow me to make reference to the book The Fall Feasts of Israel, which I wrote with my wife, Zhava, and which was published by Moody Press. We have included a full explanation in the book of how this tradition developed. You can order the book on the enclosed card or by going online to our Chosen People Ministries store at chosenpeople.com/store.

THE MEANING OF THE TRUMPET

On Rosh Hashanah, trumpets are sounded in synagogues all over the world and the story of the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22 is read. This story is called the Akedah, which means “binding” in Hebrew. The blowing of the shofar, the ram’s horn, reminds us of the ram caught in the thicket, which was sacrificed as a substitute for Isaac.

According to the Jewish sages, the blowing of the shofar and the reading of the Akedah on Rosh Hashanah remind us of the righteousness of our father Abraham and of his willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Classical Judaism teaches that forgiveness of sin comes through repentance, merit that is earned by our good works, and obedience to the Law.

Traditional Judaism also reminds us that, if our efforts fall short of pleasing God, we have merit available to us from the overflow and abundance earned by Abraham in this one act of obedience. This makes up for where we are deficient. Therefore in Judaism, the blowing of the shofar and the reading of the Akedah point us to a deeper understanding of God’s mercy and grace and to His forgiveness in spite of our human failure to merit atonement. This teaching of classical Judaism, in a sense, points us to the merit earned on our behalf by Jesus, God’s Son, at the cross.

As the Apostle Paul writes, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

JOHN 3:16 AND GENESIS 22 – A COMPARISON

The story of the binding of Isaac and its themes of mercy, grace, and God’s provision for sin, remind me of a verse in the New Testament well known throughout the ages and found in the Gospel of John: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

The comparisons between this text and the story of Isaac are profound and give us insight into the continuity of God’s plan between the Old and New Covenants. They also further unlock the mystery of God’s grace during this holiest season of the Jewish year.

In Genesis 22:2, we are brought into a conversation between God and Abraham. God spoke to Abraham and said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”

God calls upon Abraham to sacrifice his son as a burnt offering. He describes Isaac as Abraham’s only son, and Jesus is described the same way in John 3:16. In John 17:24, Jesus acknowledges that He is loved by His Father, “For You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”

This is only the beginning of the similarities. We also should note the willingness of Abraham to offer his son. In Genesis 22:1, Abraham says, Hineni, literally, “I am here” and available to do whatever you ask. This was Abraham’s response to God’s calling before he ever knew what would be required of him. This is a striking parallel, as God, the Father of our Messiah Jesus, is also willing to offer His only Son as a sacrifice because He is motivated by His love for us.

There are also many ways in which Isaac points to the “only Son,” Jesus, in John 3:16. Both Jesus and Isaac are children of a promise. The birth of Isaac was predicted in a prophecy in Genesis 15:1-5. Jesus’ birth was also predicted in the prophecies of Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6-7. Both Isaac and Jesus were born in miraculous ways. Abraham and Sarah were well past childbearing and Mary was a virgin.

Both Jesus and Isaac were innocent. Though Isaac was not sinless, nor was he an innocent child, he certainly did not deserve to be sacrificed. Jesus WAS sinless and did not deserve to die because of His sins. The prophet Isaiah also predicted this in chapter 53:6-9.

Both Jesus and Isaac were obedient to their father. During the binding of Isaac in verse 9, Isaac did not struggle or wrestle with his father who was an old man by this time. Isaiah prophesied that the Servant—Jesus—would submit to God’s will without struggle (Isaiah 53:7). We see this prophecy fulfilled in Luke 22:39-42 where Jesus says to His Father, “Yet not My will, but Yours be done.”

It is also curious to see that Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice up the mountain. “Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together” (Genesis 22:6). Isaac carried the means of his own sacrifice to the place where he would be slain. In a similar manner, Jesus carried the cross up the mountain to Calvary, where He would be crucified on the very wood He carried.

There is one further point of comparison between John 3:16 and Genesis 22. The sacrifice of Isaac is a prophetic picture of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. In Genesis 22:5, Abraham has the other young men, who are accompanying the two of them, remain with the donkey while he and Isaac continue on their journey. Abraham is either revealing the magnitude of his faith or he is in some way trying to trick these other men by implying that he and Isaac would return after whatever he was to do on the mountain was complete.

It is clear to me that Abraham, a man of great faith, believed that, though Isaac would die, somehow he would live as well. God had promised that Isaac would be the father of an entire nation and Abraham believed that God kept His promises. Abraham seemed to believe in the resurrection of Isaac; just one more way Isaac was a type—a prophecy—of His greater son, Yeshua, who would clearly die and rise from the dead. This is what is meant in Hebrews 11:17-19: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; it was he to whom it was said, ‘In Isaac, your descendants shall be called.’ He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type.”

We might wonder why God would go to such lengths to show us all of this by making such an odd request of an old man to sacrifice his only son. The answer is evident. The Lord was teaching Abraham, and us, that forgiveness of sin doesn’t come through the sacrifice we provide. Only through the sacrifice He provides in His own beloved Son, Yeshua the Messiah, can men and women, Jews and Gentiles, find atonement for their sins. In so many beautiful ways, the story of the binding of Isaac is a prophetic portrait of the true Messiah to come!

I pray that you will have a blessed holiday season. Please remember to pray for Your Mission to the Jewish People as we share the Good News of the Messiah’s death and resurrection during our High Holiday services and outreach efforts during this sacred time.

And we rejoice that, as John wrote, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

Jesus perfectly fulfilled this passage and, through faith in Him, we receive the gift of everlasting life, which is our prayer for the Jewish people during this very special season of the year.

In Messiah,

Mitch Glaser

Shalom!

I wanted to share some of my thoughts with you, as I know you love the Jewish people and support our ministries that bring the message of Messiah Jesus to Israelis and Jewish people throughout the world! It is important to remember that we serve an unchanging God who is a promise maker and a promise keeper.

Our vision for the future is built upon His faithfulness and on the success of the past! Our ministry rests upon four foundational pillars that have not changed since the day Rabbi Leopold Cohn began Chosen People Ministries in 1894:

THE FOUR PILLARS OF OUR MINISTRY

#1 YESHUA IS UNCHANGING
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)

#2 THE GOSPEL IS THE SAME
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received,
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” 
(1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

#3 THE WORD OF GOD IS PERFECT AND POWERFUL
“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” 
(Hebrews 4:12)

#4 GOD HAS PRESERVED A REMNANT TODAY AND WILL SAVE THE NATION “TOMORROW”
“In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time
a remnant according to God’s gracious choice.”
(Romans 11:5)

So what does God want us to do in light of the glorious tomorrow He has prepared for the Jewish people? I have been charged by the board of Chosen People Ministries to help our staff fulfill our mission statement:

Chosen People Ministries exists to pray for, evangelize, disciple, and serve the Jewish people and to help others do the same.

We accomplish this by:

• Planting congregations
• Establishing Messianic centers
• Backpacking ministry
• And our web-based Isaiah 53 campaigns

Our outreach to Israelis through our web-based Isaiah 53 campaign is bearing great fruit. Hundreds of Israelis are asking for the Isaiah 53 Explained book in Hebrew, and we are spending $200 per day for the ads on Facebook.

We have ministries in seventeen countries, soon to be eighteen (we will soon add a ministry to traveling Israelis in Brazil!), as by God’s grace we extend the international influence of Chosen People Ministries.

We could not do this without you – our fellow travelers along the way, prayer partners, supporters, and dear friends in the gospel.

Your brother in the Messiah,

Mitch Glaser

Shalom in the name of our Messiah Jesus.

I am writing from Israel where Chosen People Ministries is hosting about 600 fellow believers for a tour, a Bible conference, and a glorious celebration of Israel’s seventieth anniversary. The fellowship has been wonderful and so many of us have had good opportunities to share the gospel with both Jewish Israelis and lots of Arab Muslims as well.

We have also enjoyed having many of the Chosen People Ministries Israel staff share their testimonies and tell us about the good things God is doing in the Holy Land. Please pray for our ongoing work in Israel among Holocaust survivors, children, soldiers, young people, and families. Please pray for Maxim, one of our most faithful and effective workers who needs a kidney transplant and is on daily dialysis. We are praying for a donor! Meanwhile, he leads our work among the elderly Holocaust survivors. We had the joy of having about fifty survivors join us for dinner the other night, and we heard the testimony of one of them who came to faith through this ministry. There was not a dry eye among us!

There is so much more to tell, and I will try and dedicate an upcoming newsletter to our work in Israel, especially as we enter this seventy-first year of modern Israel’s existence. All I can say is that there are many more Jewish believers in Jesus in Israel today than probably since the first century. According to a recent survey, there are about  25,000-30,000 Jewish believers in Jesus in Israel. We are using Facebook to reach many Israelis. A week does not go by when we do not send out more than fifty Isaiah 53 Explained books in Hebrew to Israelis who request them.

We even have quite a few who indicate that they are religious Jews. This is amazing and encourages us to pray that the Lord will reach even the most observant Jewish people in Israel and across the globe. I share the same broken heart as the Apostle Paul who wrote, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge” (Romans 10:1-2).

ULTRA-RELIGIOUS JEWISH PEOPLE: THE LAST FRONTIER?

If I asked you what group of Jewish people would become the largest group of Jewish people in the next twenty years, you would probably answer, “non-religious Jewish people.” This is really common wisdom as our society is becoming more and more secular as the days go by. And this is true of the Jewish people as well. Already, most Jewish people do not regularly attend synagogue any more than non-Jews attend church. I cannot speak about Hindus or Buddhists but can only surmise that the more they live in the West, the more they will also become secularized.

Our world is quickly moving further and further away from the Creator and this is especially true in North America and Europe. Yet, this is not the whole story according to those who study the Jewish community. In fact, it is predicted that the most identifiable group of Jewish people in the years ahead might actually be those who are identified as ultra-Orthodox, or what we call Haredim. The Hebrew word Haredim means “to tremble,” since these very religious Jewish people tremble before God and show Him honor and devotion by keeping the Law, known as the Torah, which refers to the five books of Moses as interpreted by the sages of the Jewish people.

MY OWN JEWISH UPBRINGING

I was raised modern Orthodox, went to synagogue, learned about the Jewish religion, and studied how to read the Bible in Hebrew. But, I was still very different from the religious Jews you see wearing black clothing, having lots of children, and living the Haredi lifestyle. There are a few hundred thousand of these folks in Brooklyn alone and about a million in Israel, with the majority in Jerusalem.

I wish I could tell you that there are many Haredim who have come to know the Lord, but really there are just a few. When they come to faith in Jesus, they often lose their families and jobs and are rejected by the community. Of course, the community does not really understand the gospel. They do not know that Jesus and His first disciples were Jewish and they are only aware of the type of Christianity that persecuted the Jewish people. Most religious Jewish people have never met a born-again Christian!

ON THE DEREKH

This burden for the Haredim led Chosen People Ministries to spearhead a conference with other Jewish ministry leaders this past January. “On the Derekh” means “On the Path.” We named the conference as such since Haredi Jewish people place a high value of walking by the ways of God and staying true to the Torah. When they are not, they often say they are “off the derekh.” So we want to get them back on the derekh by coming to faith in Yeshua! The conference focused on learning, brainstorming, and praying for the salvation of ultra-Orthodox Jewish people. It was the first conference of its kind since the Holocaust and all who attended recognized how much our movement needs God’s wisdom and power to know how to present Yeshua to the Haredi Jewish community. As believers in Jesus, we know that He is the one true path! In John 14: 6, Yeshua says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

This week-long conference on reaching ultra-Orthodox Jewish people was held at our Charles Feinberg Brooklyn Messianic Center, which is in the heart of one of the key Orthodox Jewish areas of Brooklyn. I gave a lecture on evangelistic work in the past, and Zhava, my wife, taught on the history of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish movement. She lectured about how this community began and how so many of these precious people ended up in Brooklyn! We also had sessions on what is currently being done to reach these folks with the gospel and had many discussions on the development of strategies and new tools for evangelism.

We had about fifty people attend the training conference, and most were missionaries to the Jewish people from more than a dozen different ministries. We studied together, prayed, and discussed various strategies and ways that we can work together to reach this group with the gospel. One of the high points of the conference was having an Orthodox rabbi speak to our group about the lifestyle of this unique community of Jewish people.

We also conducted a prayer walk through the Orthodox areas of Brooklyn and had short conversations with many, even about the Lord. It was a great time, and I believe that in the future we will do a lot more to reach this group for the Lord.

WHAT’S NEXT?

We are asking you and others to pray for God to raise up leaders with a heart for outreach among the Haredim. We are working toward creating resources to support those who leave the community. Last year, during our summer outreach, Shalom Brooklyn, we completed more than one hundred surveys of Haredim on the streets of Brooklyn and discovered that 12 percent of Haredim say that they have read at least parts of the New Testament. This is probably a higher percentage than I had previously thought!

This was encouraging, and we believe this indicates an openness to reading the New Testament. We are also developing ads on Facebook and using other forms of social media. We are committed to finding new and creative ways to share the gospel with these beloved Haredim. In fact, Chosen People Ministries has dozens of staff and volunteers sharing the gospel this month on the streets of Brooklyn. They are again using surveys as a way to learn more about the Haredim, and, oftentimes, the surveys lead to good conversations about the gospel.

We are also experimenting this summer with service projects in the Haredi community. We clean up parks in the religious areas, visit the sick and elderly, and find other ways to show God’s love through the Messiah Jesus to Haredi families. These things are always a good testimony. We also have a special burden for ultra-Orthodox Jewish women. Our Shalom Brooklyn teams, especially women, are meeting Haredi women and their children in local parks and trying to befriend some of them. As you will read further, the Haredi moms have many children, and as believers we have a lot to learn from them about raising children.

Your prayers and support are so important to us, especially as we begin to focus more of our efforts on reaching the Haredim. One of my favorite passages of Scripture is Zechariah 12:10 where the prophet tells us what is going to happen at the second coming of Jesus. Zechariah writes,

I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.

When I think about those Jewish people turning to Jesus at this future moment, I envision the majority of the men dressed in black with long beards and side curls and the women wearing long dresses and scarves on their heads. Can you see it? Who else would be so eagerly expecting the Messiah at that time?

So, please pray with me for the salvation of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and for our staff and volunteers in Israel and for those on the streets of Brooklyn who are sharing the gospel with the Haredim and many others. We could not do this without your loving generosity and prayers.

Shalom from Jerusalem.