Book Review

The name of the school may just be a coincidence, but each summer Messiah College hosts a large gathering of Messianic Jews. The campus, which is located in bucolic south central Pennsylvania, is transformed by the presence of the worshiping and singing and dancing visitors and by the sizable contingent of protesters—usually ensconced just beyond the main entrance to the college—energetically waving signs that read "Jews for Judaism." But the excitement lasts only a few days, and then it is back to the sort of summer conferences—sans protests—that one normally expects at an evangelical college.

1

As bizarre as all this may seem to the uninitiated, Yaakov Ariel makes clear in Evangelizing the Chosen People that the aforementioned event is simply part of the latest chapter in an ongoing story within American religious history. Going where no scholar has gone before, Ariel recounts the history of Protestant missions to the Jews in the United States. Making good use of missions' organization records and the writings of Jewish converts to Christianity, Ariel divides his narrative into three parts: evangelizing Jewish immigrants (1880–1920), evangelizing the children of Jewish immigrants (1920–1965), and evangelizing Jewish baby boomers (1965–2000). The last section is particularly compelling, as Ariel describes the emergence of Jews for Jesus—an aggressively evangelistic organization with roots in the 1960s counterculture—and Messianic Judaism, with its emphasis on "amalgamating the Christian faith with Jewish heritage."

. . .