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Yiddish-language New Testaments delivered to Jewish communities in NY

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – An unnamed missionary organization has been delivering Yiddish-language New Testaments to Jewish communities in New York, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports. The Bibles were delivered anonymously but had phone numbers inside which apparently linked to the Jews for Jesus Messianic Jewish organization.

The only one of its kind, the Yiddish-language New Testament translation is owned by Messianic Jew Barry Rubin, who leads a congregation in Maryland. Rubin told TOI he does not know who is responsible for the recent delivery of the text to New York Jews. “All I know is that nobody’s doing this out of perverse or ungodly reasons. It’s just a desire to get out the good news,” he said.

Israel’s non-profit group Beynenu, which monitors missionary activity directed toward Jews, said they began to get reports about receipt of the New Testaments a month ago, TOI reports. Yiddish-language New Testaments were delivered to Monsey and Spring Valley, which have large Jewish communities, in Rockland County, north of New York City. Beynenu said it was not clear how many Bibles have been delivered, but that they were sent “all over” the communities.

The return address on the packages was for a local synagogue that was not responsible for sending them out. “[Jewish communities] are so used to getting missionary material, if it doesn’t look kosher, they don’t even open it,” Beyneynu’s Shannon Nuszen told TOI. “It just goes straight in the garbage. But this one in particular looked like the [synagogue] was sending out a free [book].”

Commenting on an accusation that Christian missionaries work to deceive Jews into reading the New Testament, Rubin told TOI: “This is not any sort of deceptive, manipulative, sneaky tactic that anybody’s using. The group that used my version of the Yiddish New Testament and modified it are just a group of people who want to share the good news that the Messiah has come with other Jews, so they felt the best way to do that is to use a Yiddish New Testament.”