I’m writing with wonderful news about how you can share help, healing and hope with even more Jewish people.
Thanks to a $150,000 matching gift provided by several supporters, whatever you give now will be DOUBLED!
You read that right. Your gift by Friday, November 30, will be matched – dollar for dollar – to reach TWICE as many Jewish people with physical healing AND the opportunity to know the hope of Yeshua (Jesus).
When you give, you’ll not only bring physical healing to Jewish people. You’ll also provide the Good News of Yeshua (Jesus) as our Messiah and Redeemer who wants to save all who turn to Him, especially my Jewish people.
I pray the gift-multiplying potential of these matching funds will inspire you to stand with us generously right now to make a life-transforming – and even life-saving – difference for a Jewish person like Birtukan, who came to visit our Medical Clinic in Enfranz, Ethiopia.
On the first day of the Clinic, about 2,000 people lined up, each hoping for treatment. Because it was a short day, we were able to help only about 500 of them.
While that’s an amazing effort, to be sure, it’s shocking to see the extent of the need. As the day went on, the lines packed in tighter and tighter in the hope of getting help, showing the genuine desperation.
Among those who came was a woman named Birtukan, which means “orange flower.” She told us that, because she’s Jewish, she has suffered terrible persecution. She has not only been rejected by her community but physically beaten.
Her neighbors don’t trust her and accuse her of having “the evil eye” – the ability to cause bad things to happen. It’s a common superstition in the area.
Birtukan came to one of our Clinics because she’d been turned away from the hospital in Ethiopia, an hour away. She was desperate for help.
After an exam and a promise to help, the team invited her to visit our nearby Prayer Tent, where she shared more of her sad story. One of our counselors shared the Good News with her and, praise God, she accepted Jesus as her Messiah!
Thankfully, we were able to perform surgery on Birtukan to fix her failing vision. Her father told us her vision had improved dramatically. They were so thankful and blessed us for what we had done for her.
I want to extend their blessing to you and so many other partners in this work. Thank you – thank you! – for your support. You’re healing bodies and sharing the saving love of Jesus with His people in Ethiopia and so many other desperate lands.
We need to continue praying for and ministering to Birtukan. She’s been told her husband, a non-Believer, will leave her if she doesn’t renounce Yeshua.
But so many more like Birtukan need help. Since they have little money for health care, free treatment and medicine are a dream. Most of us, living comfortably as we do, can’t even relate to this kind of need.
In the coming months, Jewish Voice hopes to invest $3,663,295.70 in Medical Clinics across Africa. Our goal is to provide medical, eye and dental care for 60,000 Jewish people just like Birtukan, who struggle to survive in the face of persecution and the worst living conditions you and I can imagine.
Many have no way to get care. So they just go without, allowing minor health issues, easily treated here in the West, to become serious, and even life-threatening.
By working together, we can prevent this. To not take action would be a terrible injustice to these people. So I’m looking to you and other partners to help with the cost of supplies, equipment, and travel for our team of medical professionals, support staff and volunteers.
It costs just $30 to provide one Jewish person with humanitarian aid AND the opportunity to hear the Good News.
That means – with the matching funds – your gift will be automatically DOUBLED to help TWO people.
So please give as generously as you can, knowing your gift will reach TWICE as many people.
And when you give, please know that you’ll not only bring physical healing to Jewish people but also the Good News of Yeshua as Messiah and Redeemer.
We’re planning our next Medical Outreaches right now. Won’t you please send your most generous gift possible to provide both physical and spiritual care?
Several weeks ago our staff here at Jewish Voice Ministries International participated in a ministry-wide week of prayer and fasting. We have done this twice annually for the last couple of years. It has been a powerful experience, both concerning what the Lord does in our own hearts as well as in us as a ministry. This time was no exception.
Although the work of ministry continues during these special weeks, the work of prayer increases as we have worship and prayer times available every hour of the work day all week. There is also one full day when we come together for worship, prayer and hearing from the Lord together.
During this most recent week of prayer and fasting, as always, Jonathan Bernis prayerfully shared his heart for the ministry and us as a team. Staff members gave testimony of ways in which the Lord touched them and answered prayer. We also spent time in prayer for you, our partners, lifting you up with gratitude and thanksgiving.
As we listened to the Lord together, the theme that emerged in our hearts was that God is bringing us into a new season and calling us to partner with Him to see it birthed.
“Here I am, doing a new thing; now it is springing up –
do you not know about it?”
—Isaiah 43:19a, TLV
Below are some of the prayer items that came from this fall’s set-apart time with God. Please join us in praying forward into all He is calling us to.
Please pray that we will:
Let’s pray:
Father, as Isaiah 43 beckons, we want to be those who see and discern what You are doing in this new season. We want to dwell in Your Presence, go deep in Your word, hear Your voice clearly, and follow You faithfully. We pray this for ourselves and each of our dear partners as well. In Yeshua’s glorious name, Amen.
He Who makes peace in heavenly realms, May He make peace for us and for all Israel, and let us say, amen.– Mourner’s Prayer, Jewish Prayer Book
This past Saturday, in the middle of a circumcision ceremony in a Shabbat worship Service, an armed gunman entered Etz Chaim Tree of Life Jewish Synagogue, shouting hateful slurs, and proceeded to murder eleven congregants in the deadliest attack in American Jewish history.
The gunman, Robert Bowers, told authorities while being taken away in custody:
“I just want to kill Jews.”
We at Jewish Voice mourn the loss of our Jewish brethren and stand in solidarity with the Jewish community worldwide in condemning this attack. We continue to pray for the full healing and recovery of the injured worshipers and law enforcement officers who responded to protect the synagogue members and apprehended the shooter.
As the hours progress, the details unfold, and the numbness and shock of such senseless violence give way to a flurry of emotions and opinions both locally and internationally, the Etz Chaim Synagogue tragedy will doubtless fuel the fires of hostile debate: gun control, the dangers of social media loners’ unchecked hate speech, the sharp political divisions in our nation and the fear and violence they invite.
But before all that, in this tragic hour, we at Jewish Voice remember ‒ and encourage you to remember ‒ several truths which can and should steady our thinking and affect our actions as we grapple with Pittsburgh:
Firstly, anti-Semitism (an irrational hatred toward or prejudice against Jewish people) is alive and well. While the Etz Chaim shooting was unprecedented in its deadly scope within the American Jewish community, acts of violence or destruction based solely on prejudice against and hatred toward Jews are an ongoing reality throughout world history. In fact, several of the victims in Pittsburgh were of the age to have had parents or siblings who could have been killed in the Holocaust ‒ the largest and most destructive anti-Semitic atrocity in the history of mankind. What motivated Hitler was also what motivated Robert Bowers: a prejudice that believed that Jewish people were and are the cause of his problems; therefore, they should be destroyed.
In 2017 alone, the anti-Defamation League reported a 57% increase in documented anti-Semitic acts in the United States ‒ the largest single increase in three decades of tracking. More globally, we at Jewish Voice continue to come face-to-face with threats, acts of destruction, physical violence, and even murder, against members of the Jewish communities we serve around the world ‒ in Europe, Africa, Israel, and beyond. The common denominator? Anti-Semitism ‒ vicious prejudices and seething hatred solely because of Jewish identity. The most unlikely and shocking source of so much of the anti-Semitic thinking we encounter? Leaders and groups who call themselves ‘Christian.’
Now, more than ever, we at Jewish Voice call upon Believers in the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, to unite ‒ regardless of political affiliation or ethnic background ‒ to be re-sensitized to the reality that anti-Semitism is one of the Enemy’s most dangerous, but historically most effective, means to attempt to wipe God’s Chosen People off the face of the earth. And the Enemy’s most diabolical means of circulating such a dangerous worldview? Planting it within the Body of Believers worldwide ‒ the Church. We call upon Believers to reject any theology which rejects God’s Chosen People Israel, and to actively challenge ‒ with truth and love ‒ anti-Semitic words and actions wherever when they arise.
Secondly, we are commanded in the Scriptures to rejoice with those who rejoice, but also to mourn with those who mourn. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated Sunday, “The entire people of Israel grieve with the families of the dead.” Tragedy is not a stranger to Jewish communities worldwide, and when tragedy strikes, we are accustomed to joining together to remember that, though we endure suffering, we live on. We also gather, often reciting the Mourner’s Prayer together, to remember that there is a God in Heaven who lives and endures, whose name endures, and who is able to make peace in our lives and the lives of our people even in times of grief.
At Jewish Voice, we encourage you this week to take time to mourn with those who mourn the senseless loss of life in Pittsburgh. Call and contact your Jewish friends, family members, and neighbors to let them know you are standing with them and with the Jewish community in mourning, and that you share their grief. And, of course, take this opportunity, upon every sighting of the half-staff American flag between now and this Wednesday at sunset, to pray for the Jewish community ‒ in Pittsburgh and in the cities where you live. Pray that God would comfort those who mourn, would bring hope to those who despair, and would bring shalom to those bound up with fear, anxiety, or anger as a result of this tragic past Shabbat.
Thirdly and finally, we exhort you to take bold steps this holiday season, with even more zeal in light of the Pittsburgh massacre, to share with your Jewish friends and neighbors about the One who can bring the only lasting shalom and security: the promised Messiah, Yeshua. The temptation during times of trouble of the Jewish community is for Christians to shrink back, give space, and not ‘offend’ their Jewish friends with their faith. However, we at Jewish Voice encourage and exhort you not to shrink back! Hearts are open to the Lord in times of trouble, and we encourage you to share, in love, the hope and salvation of the One by whose stripes we have been healed ‒ the One in whom all the promises of God for His people Israel (and for all peoples!) have always been ‘yes.’
Pray also for the Messianic ministries and congregations in your area ‒ like Jewish Voice ‒ that we would take bold steps, and that the Lord would open incredible doors in this season to reach out with faith, hope, and love, to our Jewish brethren who are grappling with grief, fear, and confusion. We simply cannot do what we do without your faithful prayers and support.
Thank you for standing with our Jewish people in Pittsburgh and around the world. We count on your love, prayers, and support ‒ even more so in times of trouble.
May He create peace for you, for us, and for all Israel. Amen.
Your friends at Jewish Voice Ministries International
Despite a rise in global anti-Semitism and anti-Israel resolutions originating from the United Nations and international courts, the world last week received a reminder of how God continues to bless Israel and all who bless her.
The planet’s most advanced cardiac hospital opened in Jerusalem, offering care to persons of all races, religions, and backgrounds.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
– Genesis 12:3
If there’s any doubt Israel uses its technology to bless beyond its borders, consider the story of Musa, a Muslim Palestinian baby who received a Jewish Israeli baby’s heart at a Tel Aviv hospital.
In April, The Tower reported that an Israeli-based international nonprofit organization received the 2018 United Nations Population Award for its “mission of improving the quality of pediatric cardiac care for children in developing countries and creating centers of competence in these countries.”
According to The Tower, the work of this single Israeli organization “saved the lives of more than 4,400 children from 58 countries in Africa, South America, Europe, Asia and throughout the Middle East, and trained more than 100 medical team members from these countries.”
That’s just one of many Israel-based organizations committed to making a difference through God’s blessing of advanced technology.
The health service that opened last week – the Irma and Paul Milstein Heart Center in Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center – will carry on Israel’s tradition of generosity. The center occupies roughly 48,500 square feet of the hospital’s Sarah Wetsman Davidson Tower and was made possible by a $10 million donation from Americans Irma and Paul Milstein.
According to Prof. Chaim Lotan, director of the Heart Institute at Hadassah Medical Organization, the new facilities “catapult us 50 years” into the future.
The Milstein’s son, Howard, said at last week’s dedication that his parents “saw Hadassah’s mission statement as the highest expression of the founding ideals of the State of Israel: To forge ‘links between patients of all nationalities, races and religion who come to its doors for healing.’
Join with us in prayer:
Your gift to Jewish Voice today helps support Israeli-Arab peace initiatives. It also provides medical and dental aid to elderly Holocaust survivors in Israel, in addition to reaching them with the Good News that Yeshua (Jesus) is their long-awaited Jewish Messiah.
It wasn’t an audible voice Rachel Benson heard that morning in Mudanda, Zimbabwe. She heard it in her spirit. Since Rachel isn’t one to draw attention to herself, most everything she brought on the Jewish Voice Ministries International (JVMI) Medical Outreach was in subdued tones, blacks and khakis – except for the purple t-shirt with two words in sparkling rhinestone script across the front. A mentor friend had encouraged her to bring it along.
In her tent that morning, as Rachel got ready for another day of working in the Outreach Prayer Tent, she asked, “Lord? Is that You? Do you want me to wear this shirt today?”
The answer was clearly impressed on her: Yes.
Meanwhile, a woman named Violet made her way over the dry grass holding onto her daughter-in-law’s hand. The two Zimbabwean women had been cared for at the Mudanda Clinic and now sought the spiritual care offered in the Prayer Tent.
As they stepped into the white-walled tent, a helper motioned them over to a set of folding chairs and helped 74-year-old Violet sit down. They sat in a small circle with local translators and one American woman, who was wearing a purple shirt.
But Violet couldn’t see the shirt. An accident had left her completely blind two years before. Seated among the others, Violet was quiet and withdrawn, almost as if protecting herself.
As the American woman, Rachel, talked with Violet through the translators, she learned that her blindness was caused by an accident. Rachel prayed in Yeshua’s name – the name of Jesus – that all trauma and its effects would depart from Violet.
And God heard.
Suddenly, Violet’s eyes grew large, and shock registered on her face. She looked at her daughter-in-law. She could see her!
Violet jumped from her chair and hugged Rachel. She pointed to the sparkling letters on Rachel’s shirt, describing them and everything she could suddenly see. Violet clapped her hands and broke into a dance. The quiet woman of just a moment before was now “beyond exuberant,” Rachel said.
Others in the Prayer Tent rejoiced too, praising God for the real-life miracle that had just occurred. Through the translators, Rachel explained, sharing the Gospel with Violet and her daughter-in-law. Both of the local women prayed and received Yeshua as their Messiah – a second miracle.
The women filled out cards requesting to receive follow-up visits from a local Messianic congregation. With this vital spiritual care, Violet and her daughter-in-law will be able to grow strong in the Word of God and become firmly established in their new faith. The two returned the next day to be immersed.
God doesn’t always choose to reveal Himself through miraculous wonders. But that morning, when Rachel prepared for her day, He had known from eternity past what He was going to do. And it surely delighted Him to select her wardrobe for the day.
The two glittering words written on Rachel’s t-shirt were “Miracles happen.”
You can imagine … desperation can drive sick and injured people to do just about anything to get treatment.
And desperate certainly describes many of the Jewish people (and their neighbors) we care for at our Medical Clinics. Sadly, many struggle mightily just to survive in the most poverty-stricken lands of Africa.
They often have no access to health care. So they must sometimes go to extreme lengths to get help.
Obvious painAt a recent Medical Clinic in Ethiopia, one of our team members briefly stepped outside a locked entrance to accept a delivery of food. While waiting, he noticed a boy standing across the street who was in obvious need of medical care. Because the boy’s pants were way too short, our staffer could see that his ankles and legs were terribly infected. Bleeding scabs were clearly visible, and he was in obvious pain.
Our team member was so concerned, he walked over and talked to the boy. He learned that the boy had come the day before, but we’d been unable to treat him because his parents were not there to give consent.
Thankfully, we got the necessary consent. Our dermatologist cleaned his wounds and prescribed antibiotics to fight the horrible infection.
Our doctor later said the infection was so advanced that, without the immediate treatment he received at the Clinic, the boy would have actually lost his legs.
One of the most difficult challenges at our Clinics is how to help all of the people who come to us. There are so many, we have trouble treating them all. While we hope and pray God will put those with the greatest need before us, it’s hard to watch people leave untreated.
It was certainly a case of God’s timing and providence. The Lord put this boy at that side entrance on purpose.
All of this is made possible by partners like you who pray for this ministry and give to multiply our efforts so that even more Jewish people can be reached with help, healing and hope. Thank you!
