Yeshua: The Stumbling Block — Perspectives From an Israeli Messianic Jew

We have to understand that we’re unwinding a narrative, and it’s okay that Yeshua is a stumbling block, but it’s not okay if we’re adding other stumbling blocks. So how do we get other stumbling blocks out of the way and then address the person of who Yeshua is? And while we know from scripture that there is a blindness in part on Israel, we also know that he’s promised to take that veil away. And so I’m okay if people stumble over Yeshua.

I

Just don’t want them to stumble over me

Over

The church, over the history and try to, if we can get to focusing on Yeshua, I really believe he’ll reveal himself and he’ll open eyes and he’ll tear that veil.

Welcome back to another episode of the Covenant and Conflict Podcast, where we talk about ancient truths, modern issues, and how they come together. And we have a very special guest with us today. Michael Mistretta from Israel just flew in from Canada and now he’s stopping by the podcast. Michael, thank you for being here.

It’s great to be here. And now I know this is all about conflict. We love conflict.

Oh, you are a big fan of conflict. You have to be now.

I have to be. I have to be. That’s right.

Well, we were talking a little bit before we started recording, and you are our first Messianic guest from Israel.

Wow. I love being the first love breaking the ground.

Praise Lord. This is a big one, gold border around this

Thumbnail. Surely not the last, but I’m happy to be the first.

So will you just tell everybody, listening a little bit about yourself, your story growing up, family, how’d you get to Israel? Just give us everything,

All of it. Okay. Of, yeah. Yeah. So I live in Israel now with my wife, Vanessa, and our two kids. We have a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old,

Praise God.

But Israel was not in my plans, not in my radar. I thought I was going to be going into business and making lots of money and sending money to the mission field, loved God. But God grabbed a hold of my life when I was 17 years old. I had a little bit of a different childhood. I’d started a company as a teenager, graduated high school early and moved to Texas. Come on. I mean, that’s

Where dreams are made.

Yeah, exactly. Moved to Texas and was pursuing the American dream as you would. And God hijacked my life and said, the rest of your life is going to be spent living and doing ministry in Jerusalem.

And

My first thought was, I’m my God. I’m not one of those Israel loving Christians. I mean, they’re a little bit weird. Come on. I know here at the Gateway Center of Israel, we try to Dewe Israel, but

We try. We try.

I don’t know, this was a long time ago. There was no gateway center for Israel or anything out there. And I love the great Commission. I was like, God, I’ll go to Africa. I’ll go anywhere you want me to go. But Israel had no desire, didn’t know any Jewish people, et cetera. But I said, yes, God, if this is you, you got to make it happen. God opened up a way for me to meet a Messianic family. I just started going over to their house every Friday night, learning, learning, learning.

And this was in America or this was in Israel?

This was in Texas. In Texas. Learning, learning, learning. Knowing that I felt called to go to Israel. So I just started living a Jewish life just saying, if I’m going to end up over there, I got to figure out what is Passover and

What’s

Shovel and what does Kos mean. And after a year of doing that, I took a trip out to Israel. I was 19 years old and I just backpacked across the country. Didn’t go on a guided tour, hitchhiked across the country, almost got myself killed several times.

Oh my gosh.

Had my earbuds in listening to worship music. Well, Israeli, that

Was your covering.

Israeli snipers were like cease desist. Oh no. But I just felt like God said, this is your home. And someone offered me a job and a visa and I thought, this is God. It was a church. ICA community in Jerusalem called King of Kings. What I didn’t realize is the guy who offered didn’t have the authority, one to offer the visa, and two, the job was raise your own support. So it was that kind of miracle.

Yeah, come on.

But I prayed about it, felt like God said, this is the door for you. And I bought a one-way ticket, sold everything I owned, and I moved to

Israel

At 21 years old. And little did I know that after living in Israel for a year, I found out my grandmother was Jewish, hid it from the family. I was shocked. I was perfectly content to be a gentile provoking Israel, the jealousy that was what I felt my calling was, and all of a sudden found out my grandmother was Jewish. It was hidden in the family. I went to Italy, was able to prove it with my dad, brought all that evidence to a rabbi who wrote me a letter, and I was able to immigrate to Israel, become an Israeli citizen.

So

God brought me back to Israel before I knew I was Jewish. And I also happened to fall in love and marry my Jewish wife, Vanessa. She was an Israeli citizen, but was from America originally, and she moved back to Israel. We got married there. So we got married, both of our boys born there, and that’s how we became Messianic Jews living in Israel.

Man,

That’s

Crazy. I mean, that’s a whole nother podcast in and of itself. That’s

Whole podcast.

But that’s something that’s happening a lot because of World War ii, right?

Correct.

Grandparents or great grandparents that felt like they needed to hide their Jewish identity to escape from Hitler and then kind of buried it

For sure.

Whether it was because they were ashamed of it or whether because they were afraid it was going to happen again. Is that kind of the

For sure. World War ii, and that’s the most recent thing in our history that we have. I’m sure October 7th

May

Be a similar reality of families that are worried about identifying with Jewish symbols externally to their homes. I’ve heard friends Israelis that are in London that say, Hey, we don’t speak Hebrew when we’re on the tube or on the subway in London. And then even before World War ii, you had what? The Inquisition and the Crusaders and the pot. You had these different events that caused people to say, wow, we’re not safe to be Jews in a land that’s not our own. My family comes from a group called the Anusim, or the forced ones where they were told in Italy either convert or die and some left. And people like my family stayed and they practiced Catholicism externally, but in their heart and their traditions and the privacy and secrecy of their homes, they would still pass on these Jewish traditions. So that was eyeopening for me to say the least. But it gives me a unique perspective because I fell in love with Israel as a non-Jew, and then I moved to Israel and then I found out, wow, I have this Jewish heritage and I married a Jewish woman and we have Jewish children
And we’re raising ’em in a Jewish lifestyle. And so I have a unique ability to bridge both worlds. That’s actually what we’re called to do as a ministry. And so I felt like God really just led me by the hand that brought me to Israel in a very supernatural way.

So talk a little bit about firm. When did the dream of firm become a reality where now you’re not only existing in the land and worshiping in the land, but you’re also helping so many others in the land of Israel and helping be a bridge to the church to

Connect

To Israel?

It all happened at the same time.

Great.

I moved to Israel and I joined a Messianic community called King of Kings, and I connected with the senior pastor there. His name was Wayne Hillsdon. Now he’s passed it off to a younger leader. He’s still involved there. And God just brought us together. Within three months of me moving there, God had put a vision on Wayne’s heart to start something called firm. I got a prophetic word about starting something called Firm.

We

Connected. I didn’t know what the vision was. I just knew I was supposed to serve this man, Wayne Hillsdon and his vision. And so we came be firm

About it,

Be firm about it. And Wayne had shared it with a lot of different leaders. Pastor Jack Hayford was one of those leaders and was looking for someone to help make the vision come to life. And I was 21 years old, so I didn’t know what I was doing, and I just said I could help to see it happen. I didn’t know what I didn’t know and just went for it. And I found myself a few weeks later leading the first board meeting of firm with people that were in Jewish ministry for 30, 40 or 50

Years.

And here I am, 21 years old, went behind the ears, never done Jewish ministry a day in my life. But what I value about Wayne is that he really sees potential in people, especially young leaders. It’s one of the most empowering leaders I know. And so we worked together to help found this organization along with his wife Anne. We launched at a conference called the Israel Summit in Colorado, and Wayne actually invited my now wife, Vanessa to come and introduce us.

So he played matchmaker

As well? Oh yeah. He played matchmaker. He was our Jewish Yenta and then fell in love with my wife. And we launched the organization really with the heart to do two things. One, we wanted to connect Christians around the world to gospel centered believing organizations in Israel. There’s a lot of great ways to invest in Israel, but often if people feel like they have to choose between either a very political approach or a very weird approach, and we’re like, well, we can have a not weird gospel centered way to get involved and just highlight ministries that are doing amazing work on the ground and in a trustworthy way and really up the bar of how the standard of ministry and fruitfulness in Israel. And then on the second side, Wayne saw a lot of ministries. Were all doing their own thing. No one’s working together. And if we really want to see a day where every person in Israel’s transformer the love of Yeshua, which I believe the Bible promises that

Day,

It’s always great to have your mission statement Interwoven

Will happen.

Yeah. A promise from God. You’re like, Hey, I might screw it up, but God’s got his stake. It’s a little note. Yeah, exactly. Even if I mess up the outcomes

Guarantee he’ll turn it around,

He’ll turn it

Around, we’ll get to the end destination.

But if we’re going to see that day happen, we really believe two things. We believe as a body of believers in Israel, we need be working together and to show a disproportionate impact on our society. But we also believe it’s not Jewish Israeli messianics alone. The Bible talks very, very clearly that Christians need to be part of the ones who are showing mercy and provoking Israel to jealousy. So it’s not either or, it’s both. And so that’s where we found in this organization with the vision to help bring the church together with the local body to start seeing that day unfold.

Yeah. So good. So give us a little bit of the lay of the land, both figuratively and literally, because I think a lot of people don’t know how many Messianic believers are in Israel right now.

Great question. Again,

I know that there’s some nuances there, so

Everyone will say a different number. The interesting thing, I think what people can understand is Israel, while it’s the place where almost all the Bible was written and the place where many of the biblical stories took place in ation today of about 10 million people, there are less than a fraction of 1% that believe and follow Yeshua. So we would say the number is probably somewhere between 30 and 40,000 Jewish believers in Jesus. And if we look at the Christian evangelical Arab community as well, there’s probably another five to 7,000 of those. So all in maybe you say maybe there’s half a percent of the country that are following

Half of 1%,

Half of 1%. We understand

That the place where the gospel was launched out of is right now

Point 0.1%. The most challenging verse for me in the whole Bible is when Jesus says to his disciples, you will not even make it to every town in Israel before I return, I’m going to come back. And he says, you won’t even have made it to every single town in Israel. I’m like, how can that be? We go all around the world. And he said, there’s still towns in Israel that haven’t heard his name, or at least in a former fashion he can understand or recognize. So that’s number one. That’s staggering. So the minority that we are, but then I think people didn’t understand the hostility. So the hostility towards a Jewish person that believes in Jesus, it’s not just like a minority group that I can’t identify with. We’re talking about people that would say, wow, you’re worse than a Nazi. You’ve killed the soul of a Jewish person. And people don’t understand this. They’re like Jews, I know they love Christians because any intelligent Jew does the math. How many Jews in the world? 16, 17, maybe 18 million. How many evangelical Christians? Five, six, 700 million. So any intelligent Jew just runs the numbers and says, we need Christian support and love.
And if you’re a Gentile and you believe in Jesus, awesome. You love us a lot more than another person serving Allah. That’s Islamic, right. Or Muslim. But what they don’t realize is Jews are great with Christians as long as that faith is not shared by someone who’s Jewish.

So

A Jewish person that follows the same faith as the Christians would be an offensive reality to a Jewish person

Assimilation

That’s losing the soul of a Jewish person. We’re losing Jewish identity. And there’s a spiritual stumbling block as well

Over

The idea and the person of Jesus as evidenced by the fact that you were to come to Israel, you can be new age and be Jewish.

You

Could be atheist and then be Jewish.

You

Can dabble in some Hindu, you can boot it. You can dabble in all the different witch satanic and be Jewish. But as soon as you start professing the name of Jesus

Christian.

Yeah, yeah. Well, there’s an offense. There’s an offense. Okay. You’re no longer Jewish. And that’s a challenge and something we’re trying to work against so people can understand one, the scale and two, just the hostile environment. And that kind of starts to paint the picture why believing ministries at Israel for many parts have been marginalized and are not influencing all of society. Now I do actually think some of that’s changing because of things, events we’ve seen happen. But that’s the framework in the

Background. No, that’s so good. And it’s great for Christians to hear and understand because as evangelical Christians sometimes we have this desire to want to partner with Israel, like you said, and we have to choose between the political or the ministry side. And we have open arms from many of the Orthodox communities. We have great friends that are part of the Orthodox community. And their issue with us oftentimes is how close we are to the Messianic community.

Correct.

And they love Gateway and they love evangelical Christians and they want to partner with us. But we’ve had some very even direct conversations where they’ve said, can you just lower the Messianic world?

Exactly.

Like we love that you’d say this for Israel, and we love that you had that Israel flag.

Yeah, it’s so funny. It’s so funny because they’ll say, we want Christians to love Israel unconditionally, but then they add a condition. As long as you’re not working with this group. I heard the story of a friend who was high up at the World Evangelical Alliance, and he had a delegation of Jewish rabbis from New York come to their offices and say, listen, we love what you guys do. We understand. You think everyone in the world needs Jesus. We’re such a small group. Can you just put us at the very bottom of your list? Get us last. Yeah, yeah. Can we just be the last one? Reach everyone else first. Wow. And you start to understand some of the issues. I think even for someone watching this, they might think, oh, well Christians, of course they love Israel. That’s an obvious thing.

It’s

Not obvious.

No.

My father-in-law raised Jewish in New York. He would not set foot in a church. He would not even touch a New Testament. He was taught, it was a book written on how to persecute the Jews,

Which is a common belief.

He wasn’t taught that Jesus was Jewish. He thought that Jesus was a Catholic, born in the Vatican.

First Christian.

Yeah. Yeah. The New Testament was a book written by Catholics. So this understanding goes back to real historical events. The distancing of Christianity from Judaism that happened after Constantine. And you have to understand, this goes back in people’s mind and psyche. In fact, I always tell people, if you’re in Jerusalem and you go to the Holocaust Museum, one of the main displays you see right when you walk in is they say it was the Christians in Germany that had this antisemitic spirit, that ideology paved the way for Hitler and the Nazi ideology that lets the Holocaust. So yeah, we have to understand that we’re unwinding a narrative, and it’s okay that Yeshua is a stumbling block, but it’s not okay if we’re adding other stumbling blocks. So how do we get other stumbling blocks out of the way and then address the person of who Yeshua is? While we know from scripture that there is a blindness in part on Israel, we also know that he’s promised to take that veil away. And so I’m okay if people stumble over Yeshua.

I

Just don’t want them to stumble over me over the church over the history. And if we can get to focusing on Yeshua, I really believe he’ll reveal himself and he’ll open eyes and he’ll tear that veil.

And so much of that history that you’re talking about that people stumble over, I think unfortunately many Christians are unaware of.

Oh, absolutely. I was unaware of it. I was unaware of it until someone sat me down. They handed me a book that walked through all the Christian narrative with Israel and the Jewish people. I had no idea.

I

Thought of the Christian Zionist waving flags and you think, oh yeah, politically, Christians love Israel. But that’s not how a Jewish mind hears it. And it’s so important that we know that. So we understand when we’re approaching a Jewish person what their context and what they would’ve heard about Christianity

Growing. And I think it’s important too, as Christians who, like I said, desire to want to support Israel, to think first of our messianic brothers and sisters because it’s becoming more and more of a temptation to want to partner with Israel so much

That

The stumbling block of Messianic is just, that’s a tension I don’t want to get into right now. So let me just be pro-Israel and let me have a connection be culturally

Relevant and not That’s what I want to say. Really bubble to the people. You don’t have to pick a side. You don’t have to pick a side. They’ll make you feel like you have to pick a son.

Yeah, totally.

It’ll be uncomfortable, but they have more to lose. I’m saying this is about our people. We have more to lose as a nation than we’re going to withdraw from someone who aligns with message Jews. And what I’ve found time and time again is that when you create value for people, they’re willing to tolerate certain things. So I personally, I challenge Christians don’t do what we see. What Paul confronted Peter in the New Testament of doing, he’s like, oh, you act one way towards Gentiles, but then when the Jews are in the room, you act another way being duplicitous. I mean, he really called Peter, confronted him.

And

We have to be careful. We don’t do the same thing

So good.

We don’t say, Hey, in order to be whined and dined by Israelis and government leaders, we hide the very essence of nature of who we are. Or we won’t pray in the name of Jesus.

Totally.

I think we could be respectful for Jews and they could be respectful of Christians too.

They

Could understand our beliefs.

And

I think I’ve seen over the course of this war more opportunities to do that. How well Christians that showed up to serve had an amazing opportunity to show the gospel now, now you give the context, the average Jews thinking about a Christian, the Inquisition and the Holocaust. This antisemitism

We’re

Alone in the world. That was the epitome of October 7th

Was

Jewish people, especially when the social media and everything was against Israel. They’re like, we’re alone in the world. We have no friends. So then you see a white middle-aged man from the Netherlands come and he’s like, I’m just here for six months to serve you. And what’s the question they would ask? Anyone would ask,

Why, why,

Why? And there’s an opportunity in that. I mean, we could just say, well, because you gave us the Bible and we honor your heritage, but the real reason why is because our savior is a Jew and he was called to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And we have a heart for that. And that’s not offensive or repulsive. I think it’s provocative. I think it provokes Jewish people to jealousy. I think when people say, why do you care about our land more than we care about our land? We would be out to Canada if we could. I had people say that to me, Canada’s so beautiful, why would you move to Israel? Because I have a deep love and care for the land and a deep love and care for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And there are a lot of things that Jewish people would disagree with Christians on. How can the Messiah have already come? We don’t have world peace. He hasn’t restored the world. One of the things I always say is, what Jewish man do you know of that has caused more non-Jews to follow the one true God of Abraham Isaac? And that’s one of the signs of the Messiah,
And it’s something we underemphasize. But when we were able to really be who we are and talk about Jesus not being worried about offending, it provokes people to jealousy and love.

Yeah. I think it was Maimonides who said the reality is that Christians have brought more people to the love of the Torah more so than the Jewish people. Correct. And that’s a struggle to understand, especially Maimonides was not necessarily very Christian.

Correct.

But he had this realization of, I think even Dennis Prager was talking about the reason Christians know, or the reason the world knows Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers, Deuteronomy not because

Of Jews, not because of the Jews.

So that is an interesting way to look at it. And I love the point you made about not hiding who we are because it’s tempting to, because I think a lot of evangelical Christians feel like, if I’m going to build these relationships with, whether it’s Orthodox Jews or like you said, people that are high up in the government of Israel or whatever, then I kind of have to hide this Jesus part of me because it’s so offensive. And what we’ve found is if we just put all of our cards on the table, listen, we love Jesus, big on Jesus, we love our Messianic brothers and sisters. At the end of the day, those are the ones that we’re going to fall with. But we love you too and we want to support you. And we had two orthodox rabbis on our podcast, and I love them. I wish I was having lunch on them today. They’re amazing. But they know where we stand and we’ve had those conversations and those tensions, and they maybe aren’t always the most comfortable conversations to have, but it feels better knowing everything’s out in the open. I’m not hiding a part of myself because that is more deceptive at the end of the day, if I keep that part of myself hidden because I secretly want to bring it up at some point later in the future
Rather than just no at the forefront, this is why I love Israel, because like you said, Jesus was Jewish and I’m following him and the land that God promised you, and

The only thing worse than being friends with a messianic Jew and loving Jesus so publicly is lying about it. And that’s what people don’t understand is they think they’re trying to be culturally sensitive, but what a Jewish person hates more than anything is bait and switch. So you have to be very careful. No one

Wants to be bait and switch.

No one wants, no one wants to be bait and switch, but it’s uncomfortable to have them hard conversations. I’ll give you a great example. Two years ago, my wife Vanessa and I, we miraculously were able to make an offer on a house and we had our offer accepted, and the people we were buying the house from were secular Israelis, left wing, not super religious at all. And after they accepted our offer verbally, we went over to their house The next day, we spent a couple hours talking to them, and at the end of the conversation they said, there’s just one major issue. Said, that’s a big deal. They said, it’s who you are and what you believe. They had googled us and they had found firm, and they had read about us, and they just said, we despise missionaries, despise missionaries. Explain yourselves to the point where they said three days earlier they had woken up and they said the deal’s off. And they weren’t concerned for themselves. They were concerned for their neighbors that they had known for 20 years. They thought, we can’t let these missionaries come, the community the

Come in.

So it could be shocking when that happens. And you can want, oh, no, I’m not that deny, deny, deny, deny. We had a chance to share our faith and share our story. But then I felt like God gave me this wisdom. I asked the question, what do you mean when you say the word missionary instead of denying? I said, what do you mean? He said, well, someone who manipulates and coerces and forces someone to believe something,

Conversion probably being the end goal.

Yeah. And I said, well, I despise that too. I said, of course, I would love for you to believe. I mean, I said, first of all, I’m very proud of who I am and what I believe. And I said, of course, I’d love for you to believe the way I believe the same way you’d like me to have your political views or different persuasion, but I’m not going to waterboard you. I’m not going to force you to believe it. And that was the beginning of starting to understand, oh, he had an experience as a child where his dad went to the army, met Habad guy who turned his father into an ultra orthodox observant Jew. And his dad then came home, sent them to Yeshiva. It split apart their family. They got divorced. So he was against missionaries, not because he was against Christians, he didn’t like people that pushed their faith on someone and forced them into something. And that’s not who we are, what we think. So oftentimes their idea is this coercion manipulation, why you have to understand history, what happened historically. That’s what our forefathers in the church did to the Jewish people. A

Hundred percent.

So when we can own confident, not apologize, this is who I am, this is what I believe,

And

I believe it strongly because he’s changed my life. I’m not forcing it on you,
But also you’re not denying that you would love them to believe that the same thing or see the hope and the value of Jesus. And I found by us being direct and upfront, it was helpful. And what ended up happening at the end, I said, listen, if you want to bow out, we won’t hold you to it. And he said, listen, I asked, he asked all four of their growing sons, can we sell this house to Messianic Jews? And all of them said yes. But the youngest son said, Abba, dad, you’re crazy if you don’t sell to these people. He said, my best friend in high school is a Messianic Jew, and it’s actually a good friend of our son. That was his friend, small world. But that just shows how the tides are shifting. There’s more normalization. And they who were so afraid to introduce us to their neighbors, a year later when we got the keys, they invited us over for their going away party and introduced us to all their neighbors.

Wow.

And I think that’s the testimony of being upfront about who we are

And

Just saying, listen, if that’s a problem for you, we can go somewhere else. And they’re like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We want your help. We want your love. We want your support. I just don’t think we should walk in feeling inferior. I think we should be confident about who we are. We’re not asking them to change who they are in the relationship, so we shouldn’t really allow them to ask us to change who we are.

Yeah, that’s so good. And it’s so good that what you’re asking people like in that story is to define a term, because oftentimes we’re using the same words and they mean completely different things. Absolutely. You have a Christian over here, Hey, come share your conversion story.

Yeah, exactly. When did you convert?

Because converting for us means I was once wayward and then I

Found once was blind. And now I see.

But conversion to a Jewish person has always meant historically in the church a death of their Jewish identity, a forceful death of their Jewish identity or their literal death, physical death, because they wouldn’t convert from their Jewish identity. So it’s like we’re missing each other.

So important the terms are explained. That’s really good. One of the biggest things to try to educate Christians is just why that word convert is so difficult and in some ways rightfully so.

A hundred percent.

Because you have to understand if you think a Jewish person coming to faith in Yeshua is the same as a Muslim person coming to faith as Yeshua, you’re vastly mistaken because for a Jewish person who is raised following the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob reading the Torah, loving the one true God, the God of Israel, to go and serve Yeshua, they don’t have to repent from serving the one true God to go and serve the one true God. It’s a fulfillment and completion of their faith, not the same as someone who is a Hindu or a Muslim or new age. There’s been a atheist

Where

They literally are turning away from what was, and they’re repenting from that, and they’re turning to the one true God.

And even if they were a secular Jewish man or woman turning towards Yeshua and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would be a return.

Yeah. It’s returning. Right? Absolutely. So that’s so important for people to understand, and I understand why it’s difficult. We don’t talk about any other faith or any other background that way, but that is a trigger word for people’s idea of conversion. And then the other side to that is what continuing Jewish identity do they have?

Yes.

That’s so important. I know you guys talk about a lot, so we don’t have to harp on this, but when I’ve had other conversations with people that have really struggled, I say, listen, I circumcised my sons on the eighth day and I celebrate Shabbat every week. And here I am in my Suka. We live a Jewish lifestyle. So I said to actually a reformed rabbi, I said, look, you’re all about Jewish identity from interfaith families and everything. You’re against Jesus followers. But I said, how are we any different than the L-G-B-T-Q Jewish community? Wouldn’t you celebrate Jewish identity even if there were different beliefs? And she’s like, it was a woman rabbi. And she was like, you’re right. We’re trying to celebrate Jewish identity even when there’s differences of belief. So why wouldn’t a belief in Jesus be the same? And I think actually the reformed Jewish community is one of the easier communities to have these conversations with. So tolerance, let’s use that for our advantage for once. It’s like, okay, well, can you tolerate Yeshua? Of course, they would be like, no. But then they see the error in their thinking because that they’re not equally applying the same essence.

I feel like Messianic, the Messianic community can often, from my perspective, feel like they’re caught in the middle.

For sure.

So I feel like that’s

An identity challenge.

And it’s almost been like that throughout history. The Messianic movement was almost nonexistent for much of church history, because I always say the church and the Orthodox Jewish community agreed with each other. Constantine in 3 25 was Jewish. People that want to follow Jesus aren’t Jewish anymore. They’re Christian. They have to renounce their Jewish identity. And the Orthodox community was like, yeah, we agree with that. And so it’s like, okay, great. So who’s caught in the middle? The Messianic?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

And so obviously things have changed, but as we wrap up our conversation, I know we got to go pretty soon. Two questions. One, do you still feel like the Messianic community in Israel feels like they’re caught in the middle? I know before the war, there was a lot of political upheaval. And I know from my perspective, it felt like messianics were kind of caught in the middle. We can vote on the more progressive side that has more, like you just said, tolerance

For us. But the religious community won’t accept us.

But then again, if we go towards the tolerance side, we’re also allowing a slew of things to come in that we don’t agree with Biblically. We actually err on the biblical side with the more Orthodox, but they’re the ones that are shutting us down. Correct. So first question is do you still feel like there’s that little caught in the middle feeling with the Messianic community? And two, how has everything changed since the war now that we’re coming up a year, year and a half after the war?

Yeah, I think the answer is yes, but I think it’s decreasing and changing. What do I mean by that? I think when you have a national trauma, now all of a sudden, if you live through October 7th as a Messianic Jew, it doesn’t matter if you’re Messianic Jew, if you’re secular, atheist, religious,

Right

Wing, left wing, you live through a national trauma.

So

There’s a point of commonality, and then there’s a high level of national need in national pain.
And so what I’ve found is that doors have been opened to be very open about who we are with high level government leaders that no longer, because nothing brings people together like a common enemy. It’s old school. But when you have a common enemy, it just brings people together. So we are now working with government leaders, mayors of communities that I have. People call me in and say, we know who you are. We know what you believe. I mean, on our website, we say we want to see people transform by the love of Yeshua. We’re very, very public and people are saying, we don’t care. We need your help. Now, yes, they need our money. Yes, they need our volunteers. Yes, they need all of that, but there’s a real relationship and partnership that’s forming and they’re saying, Hey, it’s okay if you’re upfront about being a Messianic Jews, this and that. We don’t really care the ones who are here. You’re the ones who are caring. And I think the de-stigmatization of Yeshua is what we’re seeing right now, and it’s not happening. Some of us thought what happened in Tel Aviv or in Jerusalem? It’s starting in the peripherals of Israel in the north, in the south, these areas that are experiencing a lot of pain.
And we now have closed, formerly closed communities

Now

Welcoming us in as believers and open to discussing faith. And the way things work in the entire Middle East and Israel is not an exception, is that relationship comes before we start talking about faith. And so when you have, it’s

Not an elevator pitch, we’re kind

Of talking, it’s not an elevator pitch. It’s not like I don’t just change my faith because I had a good sermon. I raised my hand on a Sunday or in a service. It’s a deep relationship. And out of a relationship, people ask, what do you believe in? What do you think about this? And now what I love is we’re now a year and a half after the war and we’re starting to see the fruit of that because everyone started serving right away. And no one’s going to come to faith in a traumatized moment or very few. But now people have relationships with a community they never related with before. They didn’t know Jewish believers. Now Christians and Jewish believers touch so many people across the country. If we could steward those relationships well and operate with a spirit of boldness

Saying,

This is not the Israel 10 years ago, it’s not the Israel 50 years ago, we can be bold and proud of who we are and what we believe. And people, they won’t stop wanting to work with us. They won’t stop wanting our help. And it will develop an opportunity to really share the gospel in unique ways. So I’m hopeful it’s changing. It is a difficult thing for a Jewish person identity wise. I feel like my beliefs line up here, but my culture, national identity over here. So how do I reconcile the two? And I think we have to prioritize the person of Yeshua, him being central, that being primary for us, and see our national and our cultural identity as something that’s very important. It’s key, but it’s subservient to our faith in him.

Yeah, that’s so good one. I feel it like too, from an outsider looking in, if there was a stigma that, well, you’re not really Jewish or you’re a Christian pretending to be Jewish, just kind of that old school mentality on October 7th, the enemies didn’t care when the broke in, they didn’t, they were saying, oh, you’re

Really Christian. That’s what’s happening right now. Your sons and your daughters are serving alongside of us. You live through October 7th. Don’t let someone say you’re not Jewish. And there was actually a newspaper article on our newspaper, online article, A newspaper 20 years ago, A newspaper? No, it was an online article where they were saying it Be careful of all the Christian’s money in love right now. It comes with strings attached. It was in the Jerusalem post and it was calling out some of our partners and some of the work. They and all of the comments said, you bunch of hypocrites, you’re the ultra ortho. You’re not even helping anybody.

And

You’re here calling out those who are helping. And literally the comments overwhelmingly were saying, Hey, if Christians want to love and support us, even if they want us to believe, at least they’re doing something shut up. And I think that shows the national opinion has really shifted and

Changed.

Jewish believers are becoming normalized.

People

Have had positive interactions with multiple and then real relationships. And the more we see that happening, the better. And that’s why I encourage all my friends in Israel. I’m saying we have to be bold about who we are. God’s opening up doors for us to do things

We’ve

Never before done. I’ve never heard of Messianic Jews working with the kibbutz, helping to sponsor homes for Israeli families. And a kibbutz would be one of the more closed communities. But now there’s an open door and the government’s helping and we’re unashamed. And so I think we’re in a new season, a new day, a new era. Praise

The Lord.

And I would just say to any Christian, we don’t have to be embarrassed about who we are.

We

Can love deeply and be confident about who we are and be a faithful witness.

It’s so good. Well, as we leave, what would you say is the biggest prayer request right now for you and for just the messianic body in Israel? What would be the prayer?

Yeah, I would say right now we have a lot of quiet or calm sometimes at the war, but we don’t have closure. Reserv nation, the nation is kind of still not closure. There’s still hostages, still.

Things are still suspended,

Still suspended. We’re not able to really move on.
And so I think a real healing, that’s our prayer this year. God, heal our land, heal our land, heal our hearts. Highest number of adults in any community that I know of that are experiencing PTSD symptoms per capita and children even worse. So we want to, I mean, healing is in his name, right? Healing is who he is, who Yeshua is. And so how do we bring that to our people? That’s my one prayer nationally. And then I would say for us as a body, it’s really a spirit of boldness. Boldness that God would raise up, not just laborers for the harvest, but also leaders, leaders with kingdom vision. And I’m encouraged. I’ve met with some young Israeli leaders that have some of the biggest vision I’ve ever heard of. And I thought, this is great that there’s a spirit of boldness. Let’s do things that haven’t been done before because God is able and he’s promised and the resources are there and we just need the boldness to be able to move forward confidently. So that’s my prayer for our nation, that we would not spend our time lamenting what happened and actually say, God, how are you using this to advance your kingdom purposes and your name being glorified in the midst of a crisis, which we know is what he always does.

Yeah. It’s so good. Let me pray real quick and then we’ll close out. If you’re listening, join me in prayer. Lord, I just thank you so much for Michael and Lord, thank you for everything that he’s doing and the organization firm is doing. Lord, we just pray right now for all of Israel. I asked specifically for the Messianic community, and his answer was about all of Israel, all of Israel is hurting right now. There’s so many families that are hurting and have experienced this war. I remember what young kids had to come out of C experiencing and the PTD of that, then that pales in comparison to a war that is still going on to hostages. Lord, I can’t even imagine what it’s like to live through that and then try to just continue to rebuild even though things are still suspended. Lord, I pray that you would bring finality to this season. Lord, I pray that you would redeem anything that was lost or stolen, Lord, that you would bring back families that feel like this has torn them apart. And Lord, I pray that you would heal and that you would deliver. Lord, we know that is in your name. You are the deliverer, just like you delivered Israel from Egypt. Lord, there’s so many things that try to keep us in bondage. I pray deliverance over Israel right now in Yeshua’s name. Amen. Amen. Thanks for spending time with us. Thanks for having me, David.