35 Israelis Visit our Messianic Congregation Today

Shabbat Shalom!

I sent a message this morning to my fellow elders at Tiferet Yeshua to pray for the meeting that would be starting at 4 PM in Tel Aviv. We are in the US for a few more weeks before heading back to Israel. We shared with you in the spring that Moti Cohen, who was an associate pastor when I was the lead pastor, as well as under Gil Afriat during the decade that he led the congregation, is now leading the congregation. Moti is humble and tireless. He’s doing an amazing job!

He just wrote me back that they had a Bat Mitzvah for an Ethiopian Jewish young woman. At Bat Mitzvah is like a Bar Mitzvah—the Jewish right of passage for boys, but for girls. He sent me a beautiful video of Shirel (not real name), the Bat Mitzvah girl. 

Shirel leads the congregation in worship. Please do not share on social media.

He also shared that 35 Israeli unbelievers visited the congregation. Most of them were guests of Shirel and her family. “The meeting was a powerful testimony to their extended family,” wrote Moti. Yonus Belay, who is a pastor in our sister congregation in Jerusalem, delivered the message. He too, is an Ethiopian Messianic Jew and would be a more trusted messenger coming from the same community as the family.

There were two secret air lifts of Ethiopian Jews in the 80s and 90s. I’ve shared this before, but Elana and I arrived in Israel for our first visit at the exact same time that the second airlift secretly arrived. We only found out days later in June 1991. It was called Operation Solomon and brought 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Operation Moses, in 1984, brought 8000 Ethiopian Jews. Today the Ethiopian Israeli community numbers around 170,000.

Please pray for those who heard the message of salvation today for the first time, that they will not be able to stop thinking about it. Our congregation is a Hebrew-speaking only congregation. That means that when an unbeliever walks in they understand that it is not a traditional synagogue—and we do not pretend to be—but they hear Hebrew and see Israelis worshiping in the tongue of the prophets. I remember when I first joined Tiferet Yeshua. I could not understand a word of Hebrew. Nevertheless, I could not stop weeping to see this powerful witness of the restoration of Israel—a powerful modern day prophetic sign.

A Nice Surprise

About a year before we moved to Israel in 2002, we met a couple at Virginia Beach. My parents were renting their parents’ condo. They were staying in the front of the house, and my parents had rented the back. When they found out that we were Messianic Jews and planning to return to Israel they asked if we knew her cousin Howard Bass. I had never heard that name, but quickly found out that he was a pastor in the city of Abraham, Beersheva. 

After moving there, Howard and I became friends as both of us grew up in Richmond, Virginia. This morning he sent me a WhatsApp text saying he was in town. I told him that I was too and we met for coffee. It was the first time that we’ve actually seen each other in Richmond. Pray for Howard and the Congregation he leads, Nachalat Yeshua (Yeshua’s Inheritance) in Beersheva.

Elana and I head to Charlotte soon for a conference. And then I will be preaching for Pastor Ray Curry Jr. on Sunday at Church Unlimited. And then it’s back to Israel.