Jews for Jesus is an international Christian missionary organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, that is affiliated with the Messianic Jewish religious movement. The group is known for its proselytism of Jews and promotes the belief that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God. It was founded in 1970 by Moishe Rosen as Hineni Ministries before being incorporated under its current name in 1973.
Jewish religious and communal authorities do not recognize Jews for Jesus as a Jewish religious organization and regard its belief in Jesus as the Messiah as incompatible with Judaism. Jews for Jesus, however, maintain that belief in Jesus is compatible with Jewish identity. The organization's relationship to Judaism and its reception within Jewish communities have been subjects of longstanding controversy.
History Jews for Jesus was founded by Moishe Rosen, a Jewish convert to Christianity who later went on to become a Baptist minister in the Hebrew Christian movement and a former member of the American Board of Missions to the Jews (ABMJ). The organization was formed in 1970 under the name "Hineni Ministries" as a subsidiary of the ABMJ. By 1972 they were getting newspaper coverage as "Jews for Jesus", but the affiliation with ABMJ remained. In 1973, Rosen left ABMJ and incorporated his ministry as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization under the name "Jews for Jesus". Originally, "Jews for Jesus" was one of the organization's several slogans, but after the media began to call the group "Jews for Jesus", the organization adopted the name.
Rosen and members of the organization began their ministry by conducting community outreach on streets and college campuses in San Francisco, California. In the following years, branches were established in New York, Chicago, and Boston. In 1978, Jews for Jesus relocated its headquarters to its current location in San Francisco. In 1981, the organization expanded internationally. According to the organization, as of 2026 it maintains offices in 11 countries and 15 cities around the world.
Rosen remained Executive Director of Jews for Jesus until 1996, when he stepped down to work full-time as a staff missionary. He was replaced by David Brickner, who held the position until May 2024. Aaron Abramson is the current Executive Director and CEO of Jews for Jesus.
Beliefs
Jews for Jesus claims that it syncretizes Jewish heritage and Christian faith into spiritual harmony. It believes that faith in Jesus is a viable expression of Jewish life.
The organization summarizes its beliefs in a statement of faith: The Old Testament and the New Testament are divinely inspired, without error, and are the final authority in all matters of faith and life. Traditional Jewish literature is in no way binding upon life or faith but of value only where it is supported by or conformable to the Word of God. There is one sovereign God, existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They believe that this concept is rooted in Judaism. Mankind was created in the image of God, but due to sin has been separated from God. Jesus is the Messiah and died for the sin of mankind as a substitutionary sacrifice. All who believe in Him have salvation. The Church is an elect people in accordance with the New Covenant, comprising both Jews and Gentiles who acknowledge Jesus as Messiah and Redeemer. Jesus will return personally in order to consummate the prophesied purposes concerning His kingdom. The bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust, the everlasting blessedness of the saved and the everlasting conscious punishment of the lost.
Operations Jews for Jesus is a registered 501(c)(3) organization. Its headquarters are located in San Francisco, California, and operates offices in New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto, Sydney, Johannesburg, London, Berlin, Paris, Budapest, Kyiv, Odessa, Moscow, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem.
They are a charter member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability and of MissioNexus.
Jews for Jesus is governed by boards of directors in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Israel, and Europe.
Public's perception
Jewish community's perception Jews for Jesus has a contentious relationship with the Jewish community, and its methods have generated controversy. All Jewish authorities, as well as the governing bodies of the State of Israel, hold the view that Messianic Judaism, the religious movement with which Jews for Jesus is affiliated, is not a sect of Judaism but a form of Christianity. Additionally, Gentiles who convert to Messianic Judaism are not recognized as Jewish by any Jewish movement. However, Jews for Jesus says they "cannot support any efforts by Gentile believers to convert to any type of Judaism."
Some Jews believe that Jesus was a good Jewish teacher, other Jews believe that he was a false prophet, for certain, most Jews believe that he was a failed messiah claimant. Belief in Jesus as deity, Son of God, or even a non-divine Christ/Messiah or prophet (as in Islam), is held as incompatible with Judaism by most Jewish religious movements."For most American Jews, it is acceptable to blend some degree of foreign spiritual elements with Judaism. The one exception is Christianity, which is perceived to be incompatible with any form of Jewishness. Jews for Jesus and other Messianic Jewish groups are thus seen as antithetical to Judaism and are completely rejected by the majority of Jews". (Kaplan, Dana Evan. The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism, Cambridge University Press, August 15, 2005, p. 9).A belief in the divinity of Jesus is incompatible with Judaism: "The point is this: that the whole Christology of the Church — the whole complex of doctrines about the Son of God who died on the Cross to save humanity from sin and death — is incompatible with Judaism, and indeed in discontinuity with the Hebraism that preceded it." Rayner, John D. A Jewish Understanding of the World, Berghahn Books, 1998, p. 187. "It has always been recognized, for instance, after the rise of Christianity and Islam, that these two religions are incompatible with Judaism and that no Jew can consistently embrace them while remaining an adherent of Judaism." Neusner, Jacob & Avery-Peck, Alan Jeffery. The Blackwell Reader in Judaism, Blackwell Publishing, 2001, p. 8. "Aside from its belief in Jesus as the Messiah, Christianity has altered many of the most fundamental concepts of Judaism." Kaplan, Aryeh. The Aryeh Kaplan Anthology: Volume 1, Illuminating Expositions on Jewish Thought and Practice, Mesorah Publication, 1991, p. 264. "[The] doctrine of Christ was and will remain alien to Jewish religious thought." Wylen, Stephen M. Settings of Silver: An Introduction to Judaism, Paulist Press, 2000, p. 75. "For a Jew, however, any form of shituf is tantamount to idolatry in the fullest sense of the word. There is then no way that a Jew can ever accept Jesus as a deity, mediator or savior (messiah), or even as a prophet, without betraying Judaism. To call oneself, therefore, a 'Hebrew-Christian,' a 'Jew for Jesus,' or in the latest version a 'messianic Jew,' is an oxymoron. Just as one cannot be a 'Christian Buddhist,' or a 'Christian for Krishna,' one cannot be a 'Jew for Jesus.'" Schochet, Rabbi J. Immanuel. "Judaism has no place for those who betray their roots", Canadian Jewish News, July 29, 1999. This July, Hebrew-Christian groups such as Jews for Jesus will work to convert Jews to another religion. The Jewish Response to Missionaries (NY Board of Rabbis) Judaism and Jesus Don't Mix (foundationstone.com) Jews believe that "Jews for Jesus", "Messianic Jews", and "Hebrew Christians" are no longer Jews, even if they were once Jews (whatjewsbelieve.org) "If you believe Jesus is the messiah, died for anyone else's sins, is God's chosen son, or any other dogma of Christian belief, you are not Jewish. You are Christian. Period." (Jews for Jesus: Who's Who & What's What by Rabbi Susan Grossman (beliefnet – virtualtalmud) August 28, 2006; archived 2006-11-23) "For two thousand years, Jews rejected the claim that Jesus fulfilled the messianic prophecies of the Hebrew Bible, as well as the dogmatic claims about him made by the church fathers—that he was born of a virgin, the son of God, part of a divine Trinity, and was resurrected after his death. ... For two thousand years, a central wish of Christianity was to be the object of desire by Jews, whose conversion would demonstrate their acceptance that Jesus has fulfilled their own biblical prophecies." (Jewish Views of Jesus by Susannah Heschel, in Jesus In The World's Faiths: Leading Thinkers From Five Faiths Reflect On His Meaning by Gregory A. Barker, editor. (Orbis Books, 2005) . p.149) "[There] are limits to pluralism, beyond which a group is schismatic to the point where it is no longer considered Jewish. For example, everyone considers Messianic Judaism and belief in Buddha as outside of the Jewish sphere." (Why did the majority of the Jewish world reject Jesus as the Messiah, and why did the first Christians accept Jesus as the Messiah? by Rabbi Shraga Simmons) "No Jew accepts Jesus as the Messiah. When someone makes that faith commitment, they become Christian. It is not possible for someone to be both Christian and Jewish." (Why don't Jews accept Jesus as the Messiah? by Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner) However, there has been some debate of that point by Jewish scholars. Daniel Boyarin, a Jewish historian of religion and professor of Talmudic culture at UC Berkeley, writes in one of his books:
Most (if not all) of the ideas and practices of the Jesus movement of the first century and the beginning of the second century—and even later—can be safely understood as part of the ideas and practices that we understand to be "Judaism."... The ideas of Trinity and incarnation, or certainly the germs of those ideas, were already present among Jewish believers well before Jesus came on the scene to incarnate in himself, as it were, those theological notions and take up his messianic calling.
Dan Cohn-Sherbok, a rabbi of Reform Judaism and professor of Jewish Theology at the University of Wales, implies that Messianic Judaism should be embraced in the Jewish community:
...the non-Orthodox rejection of Messianic Jews is more difficult to comprehend given the multidimensional character of contemporary Jewish life ... There is simply no consensus among non-Orthodox Jews concerning the central tenets of the faith, nor is there any agreement about Jewish observance. Instead, the various branches of non-Orthodox Judaism embrace a totally heterogeneous range of viewpoints ... in my view Messianic Judaism constitutes an innovative, exciting, and extremely interesting development on the Jewish scene.
In a 2013 Pew Forum study, 60% of American Jews said that belief in Jesus as the Messiah was not "compatible with being Jewish", while 34% found it compatible and 4% did not know. A 2017 survey that included Messianic Jews "found that 21 percent of Jewish millennials believe Jesus was 'God in human form who lived among people in the 1st century.'" An additional question on faith in the survey found that 14% of participants identified with Christianity, and 10% believed in a hybrid of Christian and Jewish beliefs.
In 1993 the Task Force on Missionaries and Cults of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRCNY) issued a statement which has been endorsed by the four major Jewish denominations: Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Reform Judaism, and Reconstructionist Judaism, as well as national Jewish organizations. Based on this statement, the Spiritual Deception Prevention Project at the JCRCNY stated: