Jewish Voice Broadcasts was founded just months before the outbreak of the Six-Day War and the restoration of Jerusalem in June of 1967. Louis Kaplan, a rough and tumble Jewish believer in Jesus, was, at the time, a Pentecostal healing evangelist ordained by the Assemblies of God. Born in New York, he left home at age 15 to see the world. He rode the rails across the U.S. for four years until he wound up in Florida. There, at 19, he accepted Jesus as his Savior and decided it was time to make his way back home. His parents responded to his new faith by kicking him out of their house. Not long after, Louis became a traveling evangelist, sharing his faith as a Jewish Believer around the country. He ended up in Phoenix with a family of his own, and it was there that he received an undeniable call from the Lord to begin a weekly radio broadcast on KHEP. He incorporated the ministry and called it “Jewish Voice Broadcasts.”
Almost immediately, the radio program found a receptive audience and soon grew to over 20 stations around the country. Within five years, over 40 stations worldwide were airing it. In 1978, Louis heard again from the Lord, this time about going into television. He reluctantly accepted the call, and soon Pat Robertson invited Louis to join his CBN television network. Television equipment was very expensive in those days, and Louis wasn’t convinced that such an endeavor was worth all it would cost. Still, if it could reach more people for Yeshua (Jesus), he was all for it. He used to say “Imagine it, we can reach more people in one broadcast than Jesus reached during His entire ministry on Earth…Hallelujah!”
The television program, called “Le Chayim” (which means, “to life” in Hebrew) interviewed Jewish people who had come to faith in Jesus. Since Louis hated being in front of the camera, his wife Chira often hosted the program. Chira, a Finnish Christian with a love for Israel, had caught Louis’ eye while he was in Jerusalem preaching. They were married in 1971, and over the next 28 years, she was senior editor of Jewish Voice Prophetic Magazine, host of the television program, and an absolutely vital part of the ministry. In fact, she was, in many ways during those years, the driving force.
Chira traveled with her JVB cameraman, Chris Wright, to cover a large-scale Hear O’ Israel! Festival of Jewish Music & Dance I was leading in Kishinev, Moldova. When she saw the scope of the outreach (we had rented the central football stadium for the event), she began referring to me affectionately as the “Great Impresario.” Almost immediately, she began trying to recruit me as Brother Kaplan’s successor at the helm of Jewish Voice, since he was by then 80 years old (although he was still in great physical shape).
I was resistant at first, assuring her I had no interest whatsoever in moving back to the United States from Russia or being involved in Christian television. I did agree to come to Phoenix and appear as a guest on the program. That was the beginning of numerous long airline flights between Phoenix and St. Petersburg, Russia, where I lived at the time. Then, in 1997, Chira convinced Louis to come with her to Riga, Latvia, to attend one of our festival outreaches. Sadly, en route to Helsinki to spend some time before the festival with Chira’s family, Louis suffered a stroke from which he never recovered. Completely paralyzed, he was flown back to Phoenix three weeks later and died almost two years later in May of 1999.
During that difficult period, I was already a member of the Jewish Voice Broadcasts board and agreed to take on the interim leadership of the ministry until another leader could be found. Over the months that followed, it became clear that God was calling me to take this role on a permanent basis. So in November of 1999, I moved to Phoenix and became executive director of Jewish Voice Broadcasts.
At the time, I was leading the ministry I had founded back in 1984 for college outreach and for the later festival work in Russia, Hear O’ Israel Ministries (HOIM). For the next year, I ran two independent organizations, Jewish Voice Broadcasts and Hear O’ Israel Ministries, both of which really demanded fulltime attention. For this reason, in 2001, we merged the ministries and formed Jewish Voice Ministries International.
In the 16 years that have followed, God has poured out His blessings in a tremendous way. Thanks to His favor and your prayer and financial partnership, the ministry has grown exponentially.Our staff has grown from 15 to almost 100 as of this publication. Indeed, God has been good to us!
