Some Jewish Witnesses For Christ
girl. I was born on April 5th, 1828. My mother and three children died
at a time when I was too young to remember them. My father was baptized
into the Christian Church. I received a good secular and religious
education, enough to lead me to avoid bad company; not so much to honour
God as to honour myself in order to be respected and esteemed so as to
mix with the best society.
"Ignorant of and prejudiced against Christianity, how wonderful were the
dealings of the Lord with me will be seen from the following
record:--About 1841 I visited Constantinople. Here a young Jewish friend
persuaded me, after much effort, to go with him to a Mission House,
where we heard a godly sermon preached before a gathering of young
Israelites, by the Rev. Dr. Schwartz, who, later on, was Pastor of
Trinity Chapel, Edgware Road, West London, and also a member of the
Committee of the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among
the Jews. His Scriptural discourse awakened in me a desire to know more
about Christianity, and I often went to hear him preach at the Chapel of
the Prussian Embassy on the fore-noons of the Lord's Day.
"Having for a few years been convinced of the truth of Christianity, I
studied the Old and New Testament together, praying morning and evening
for light.
"About 1844 I again visited Constantinople on my way to Asia Minor for
hunting, with a view to becoming a naturalist by profession, collecting
wild animals, birds, and insects of all sorts for the museum. It was
whilst hunting on the top of Mount Olympus that the glorious scenery and
the power of God's Word, created as it were, a voice within me, ordering
me to leave all things, and I returned to Constantinople, and was
baptized by Mr. Allen, son-in-law of Dr. Duncan, the well-known 'rabbi
Duncan' of Edinburgh.
"Again I returned to Broussa, and on my own account I preached the
Gospel for a whole year to Jews, Armenians, and Greeks, from among whom
many, through Divine grace, were converted.
"Thus encouraged I went to Malta, where for about six years I studied
literature and theology in the Protestant College there, and in return I
gave lessons to boys in different classes, four hours a day. To complete
my preparations for the ministry of the Church I studied both in London
and Edinburgh.
"The Jewish Committee of the Established Church of Scotland engaged me
for about seven years, during which time I laboured as one of their
missionaries at the stations of Salonica and Smyrna, with encouraging
results, through the Divine blessing resting upon the Jews, Armenians
and Greeks. After this, on my resignation, I returned to Edinburgh and
London.
"Whilst in London the Committee of the Malta Protestant College, to whom
I was well known, and amongst whom were the late Lords Shaftesbury,
Calthorpe and Kinnaird, engaged me, and I went to the East to establish
British Schools for boys in all the principal towns bordering on the
Mediterranean and Black Seas. I established in Cairo a large boarding
and day school, and for over two years I worked on until my health
completely broke down, and, acting upon medical advice, I resigned and
came to London.
"On August 21st, 1865, I was engaged by the Committee of the British
Society, and ever since then I have been labouring, in Adrianople,
chiefly among the Jews, but also among the Armenians and the Greeks.
During the first ten years I baptized forty Jews, whilst other enquirers
of mine have been baptized in Constantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem and
London. Many unbaptized Jews, Armenians and Greeks, have also been led
to believe in Jesus as the Saviour of their souls." He died in 1905
after more than forty years missionary work in Adrianople.
ROSENBERG, Samuel, M.D., was baptized at Constantinople about 1873. He
accompanied General Hicks on his compaign in the Soudan, where he lost
his life with the rest of the expedition.
ROSENBOHM, a Jewish convert in Sweden, was tutor of Hebrew at the
University of Upsala, in 1720. At the Coronation of King Friedrich, he
delivered a rabbinic oration, and likewise at the conclusion of peace
between the Kings of England, Denmark, and Prussia. (Wolff Bib. Heb. 3
N, 2138 a).
ROSENFELD, J. F. (Asriel), was born in 1807. His parents brought him up
piously, and married him at the age of fourteen. Coming in contact in
Berditsheff with a Scotchman, he received from him a New Testament. He
then went to Warsaw, became an inmate in the House of Industry, and
learned the trade of bookbinding, was baptized in 1828, and afterwards
laboured zealously as a missionary in Poland until his death in 1853.
ROSENSTRAUCH, Max, was born at Lemberg, on September 1, 1837. His
parents Moses and Scheindell, were strictly orthodox, and brought him up
in the straitest customs of strict Judaism. As he grew up, they were
proud of his Talmudical knowledge, their intention being that he should
become a rabbi. When seventeen years old, family circumstances compelled
him, however, to go into business, and he was apprenticed to a merchant,
with whom he remained ten years. In 1865, he accepted the post of a
schoolmaster in Jassy. Whilst there he heard of the Hebrew learning of
the Rev. W. Mayer, one of the L.J.S. missionaries, and formerly a
scholar in their mission schools in London. From him he received a New
Testament, which he read with eagerness, leading him to take Christian
instruction for eighteen months. Soon after this a strange event took
place in his life. He had left Jassy, and was on a steamer going to
Odessa, when the engine broke down. There being danger, the Captain
called upon all the passengers to pray. This Max Rosenstrauch felt he
could not do in the Name of Jesus Christ; all he could say was--"Lord,
teach us to pray." Later on the captain gave an earnest address to the
passengers on St. John iii. 14, 15; this he did not fully understand, but
what he did made a lasting impression upon him. In 1867 he was in
Kischineff, and of this period he says, "It only awakens in me painful
reminiscences. My Talmudical supports had been broken by the instruction
received at Jassy, and I fell altogether into unbelief. I could perform
neither Jewish nor Christian prayers. I did not even believe in the
existence of God. I sometimes disputed with the Scotch missionary, Mr.
Tomory, and Mr. Daniel Landsmann, and they knew me as a thorough
infidel Jew. At Odessa I lived as an atheist, and I had no intercourse
with any Christian. I was busy the whole day at a boarding-school, under
Mr. Trübitsch. At Kischineff my slumbering conscience was aroused, and
an unspeakable struggle agitated my heart, until the Lord opened my
eyes, and in every page of the Bible I saw the glory of Him who said, 'I
am the Light of the World.' In His Name I was baptized on Easter Day,
1868." After some years of missionary work with continental societies,
he joined the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the
Jews, in which he remained till his death, November 3, 1900. The
"Prayer-book for Jewesses" and his "Catechism for Jews," which he wrote,
have been most useful in his work, and in that of the above Society
generally.
ROSENTHAL, Rev. Michael, Vicar of St. Mark's, Whitechapel, who died at
the age of 63, was a converted Jewish rabbi, who for thirty years
carried on an earnest missionary work among the Jews of East London. The
story of his conversion is a remarkable one. Young rabbi Rosenthal, a
Hebrew of German extraction, was a profound Talmudist, and as strict and
zealous a Jew as was Saul of Tarsus before the journey to Damascus.
Rosenthal was sent on missions in connexion with the faith of his
fathers to Asia Minor, to North Africa and other countries, and finally
to England. On a steamboat he met a very learned and able man, who he
believed was a Jesuit. The man was certainly a Roman Catholic, and he
possessed a good deal of rabbinical lore. Rosenthal, as a strict Jew,
observed all the dietary and other laws of his people, and took his
meals separately. The supposed Jesuit ridiculed his scruples, and one
day, when the young rabbi was dining alone, touched his bottle of
claret, thereby, of course, rendering it defiled. Rosenthal was angry,
and the man saw this and taxed him with over-niceness in ceremonial
observance. "Do you really think," he asked, "that God is pleased by
your rejecting things that are good enough for the captain and other
people on the ship, and that you really serve Him by making yourself so
different from anybody else?" They had some conversation, which left a
great impression on the young rabbi's mind. One argument used by the
supposed priest had considerable effect. The Jews in the course of their
history during the last nineteen hundred years have acknowledged no
fewer than twenty-four Messiahs, all of whom have turned out to be
false, either impostors or self-deluded fanatics. Can a nation that has
made the gigantic mistake of accepting twenty-four false Messiahs claim
to be infallible in rejecting a twenty-fifth? All these false Messiahs
have appeared and been accepted since our Lord lived on earth except
"Judas of Galilee," who was a contemporary of Jesus Christ. Some time
after his arrival in England Rosenthal became acquainted with Dr.
Wilkinson, then rector of St. Peter's, Eaton Square. The young rabbi was
tremendously impressed by Dr. Wilkinson's great abilities and spiritual
earnestness. "Here is a Christian," he said to himself, "who is
absolutely sincere and of great intellectual power. Can Christianity be
merely a modern form of Paganism when such noble souls as these profess
it?" He listened to Dr. Wilkinson, and was on the way to conversion when
the good rector advised him to have recourse to the learned Dr. Ewald, a
celebrated Jewish missionary of the L.J.S., for the solution of
difficulties which only a Hebraist could deal with successfully.
Rosenthal was eventually baptized by Ewald. He took orders in the
English Church, being ordained deacon by Dr. Jackson, Bishop of London,
in 1877. Four years later he was admitted to the priesthood, and he
served for thirteen years as curate to the Rev. S. J. Stone, author of
"The Church's One Foundation," at St. Paul's, Haggerston, devoting
himself chiefly to mission work among the East-end Jews. He organized
the East London Mission to the Jews, which first came under regular
diocesan management when the present Bishop of London was Bishop of
Stepney. In 1899 Bishop Creighton presented Mr. Rosenthal to St. Mark's,
Whitechapel, a parish which is inhabited almost entirely by Jews. He met
with a good deal of hostility from the Jews in the first years, but he
talked straight to them and gradually the opposition died down, and he
steadily pursued his mission work among them. His labours were attended
with considerable success. He said that he had himself baptized over six
hundred Jews and Jewesses.
ROSENTHAL, Wildan Charles (Simeon), a learned Jew in Jerusalem, was
baptized with his wife, son and daughter by Nicolayson in 1839. This
family were the firstfruits of the L.J.S. mission in the Holy City. His
daughter became the wife of Mr. Bergheim, the banker, a Jewish convert.
ROSSVALLY, Dr. Max L., an American Jewish convert in the latter half of
the nineteenth century. He had been an actor, and after his conversion
became well-known as a lecturer in America and in England. He displayed
great zeal in his endeavours to form a Hebrew Christian Union, and in
1877 it is recorded that two hundred converts were united together and
held monthly meetings in New York and in Brooklyn. Rossvally wrote "The
Dying Trumpeter and his Experience," a German version of which appeared
in Hamburg, in 1891.
RUBEN, Maurice, was born in Prussia, in 1856. His people were typical