Ministries in
New York City

These famous lyrics, penned by New Yorker Billy Joel, seem so appropriate when it comes to bringing the gospel to the Jewish people. There is hardly a more accurate statement. For many decades of our 125-year ministry, Chosen People Ministries’ International Headquarters has been in New York City. In fact, from our very inception in 1894 (when we were called the Brownsville Mission to the Jews), Your Mission to the Jewish People has had a New York state of mind.

Rabbi Leopold Cohn, founder of Chosen People Ministries, began handing out gospel tracts on the streets of Brownsville in 1894, just two years after coming to faith in Jesus. With an ever-growing burden to reach his Jewish kinsmen with the good news, Cohn expanded his outreach to include the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and changed the name of the ministry to the Williamsburg Mission to the Jews. In 1924, the name changed to the American Board of Missions to the Jews as we advanced into the epicenter of New York life—Manhattan.

The ministry grew during these past 125 years beyond both state and international borders, with missionaries now serving in seventeen countries around the world. Yet, because New York still maintains its large and vibrant Jewish community, it is a critical focus of our ministry.

The concentration of Jewish people in New York City and the surrounding counties is impressive. Almost 8.5 percent of adults in the region identify themselves as Jewish by religion. The total number of Jewish people in the five boroughs of the city, including those who claim Jewish ancestry with no religious affiliation, edges just above two million people. Thirty-six percent of the New York Jewish community resides in Brooklyn and thirty-seven percent of those claim to be Orthodox—an astounding number!

Effective Jewish outreach must include this growing group of Jewish people. Our Charles Feinberg Messianic Center, in the heart of Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn, is ideally placed for this ministry. It is becoming increasingly important to hold conferences at the Center that are specifically geared towards training others how to reach the ultra-religious in Brooklyn.

Robert Walter, the Brooklyn branch leader and one of the coordinators of our conferences for Orthodox outreach, shared this:

This conference was very informative and helpful for me in my ministry, as we now have contact with religious Jewish people we never would have met if we did not take the time to better understand the culture and find ways to better communicate the love of the Messiah with them.

We also recently placed Facebook ads in Yiddish (the language spoken by most ultra-Orthodox Jewish people) that are designed to inspire religious Jewish seekers to view a ten-minute version of the Jesus film in Yiddish. The advertisement was quite successful. We believe this is a difficult but precious group to reach for the Lord, and many are open and searching.

In addition to the Orthodox population, there is a large Russian-speaking Jewish population. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union now live in New York City. By God’s grace, Chosen People Ministries has a Russian ministry that operates out of the Brooklyn Messianic Center. Klaudia Z. has led this work now for more than twenty years. Once a month, she holds meetings for pastors of Russian congregations in Brooklyn. She wrote:

A couple of days ago, one of the attendees of the Bible study brought a Jewish man to our group. We shared the gospel with him, and he prayed to receive Jesus as his Messiah and Lord! Afterward, he wanted to understand more about his decision. It was a touching moment, especially when it had become clear to him that Jesus was the Messiah he had been searching for all his life!

What a tremendous blessing to be able to hear the gospel in your native tongue even when so far from home. God’s provision is abundant!

The opportunity to evangelize the vast numbers of Jewish people in New York City demands we do our best to train workers for the harvest field. The Charles L. Feinberg Center for Messianic Jewish Studies exists by God’s grace. The program, a partnership between Chosen People Ministries and Talbot School of Theology of Biola University, was established in 2007. The seminary now occupies the second and third floors of the Brooklyn Messianic Center, and the basement holds a library of more than ten thousand volumes. The building serves as a place of education and as a base for ministry.

One of the students in the program had a remarkable ministry experience in Brooklyn, just down the street from our ministry center. As he was setting up a book table outside of the subway station, he encountered a man whose bicycle had just been stolen. He had this to share:

I started asking him questions and discovered he was an Israeli. I began to share with him a bit of my testimony, and God put it in my heart to offer to pay for his trip home. His eyes lit up, “Thank you so much! But why would you do that?” I told him that Jesus called us to love our neighbor, and I believed in that wholeheartedly. What a joy it was to share the love of Messiah with this young Jewish man.