Tzedakah Ministries - Tzedakah Ministries

An Open Letter to All My Jewish Friends

SPECIAL NOTE: The wording to the right of this special note is real.  These words were posted as a headline in a large Jewish newspaper published in Texas (actual headline itself was not printed due to copyright questions).  It was directed at me as I am the “soon-to-be former friend” to whom the columnist was addressing.  Below this special note, you will find my return email to the writer along with an open letter to all Jewish people who as of yet do not know Jesus as their Messiah.

Please pray for the journalist who wrote the article.  Please pray for all the Jewish people who are seeking, whether intentionally or not, Messianic answers to their eternal questions.  Please remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem … a peace that is only possible through Messiah Jesus.By the way, you might be curious as to what I did to cause this friend to end our friendship (at least from the writer’s perspective), I sent a Passover card which proclaimed Jesus.

Dear XXXXXXX, (ACTUAL EMAIL TO MY FRIEND)

What is interesting in all this mishegoss is that I almost did not send you the card. I knew there was a possibility that you could become angry and that was the next to last thing I wanted. However, I sent you the card because I want to call myself friend and a true friend (I believe) will share truth even if the words are hard to read and/or hear. And I do believe the words I shared with you are true.

I am saddened at my core that you desire to no longer call me friend. However, I will respect your obvious request for distance but I always consider you a friend. So ... if there is ever a time when you need a friend, I will be there to answer the phone or respond to an email or whatever you need.

Until or if that time ever occurs, I will be waiting and, yes, praying.

Amy

Dear Jewish Friends in the United States and Around the World,

I usually begin most of my letters to friends with this expression – “Shalom in the name of Messiah Jesus!”  This I know, however, is going to offend 99% of the Jewish people who read this letter.  For did you know that 99% of world Jewry do not believe Jesus was the Messiah?  However, I believe I must begin my letter to you in the same manner.

How come?  I must because I want to ask you one simple question, before I continue with my letter to you, and that question is “Why?” Why do you not believe in Jesus?  Please do not give me your rabbi’s reason or some anti-missionary response that you yourself perhaps do not even understand.  What is your core reason for not believing in Jesus?  Is it tradition?  If so, are you still a regular attendee of a synagogue?  Do you still seek to practice all 613 Torah laws?  If not, why not?  Is that not tradition as well?

Is it because you are afraid of what it might cost you in the community or in your family?  Is it because you do not want to face the eternal reality of where your family who have passed on from this earth might be right now?  Is it …?  Or … is it you don’t know why because you really have never been introduced to Jesus the Jewish Messiah?  I would like to give you a few “WHY’s” for Jesus if you will allow me.WHY?  He fulfilled dozens of Old Testament prophecies with His first coming and will fulfill dozens more with His second coming. WHY?  The miracles He performed and His own words make him as C. S. Lewis once described to be either a lunatic, a liar, or the Lord.  My faith and eternity is banking on the fact that Jesus is who He said He was, “I Am.”

WHY?   The testimony of the disciples after the Resurrection is tangible evidence that they were eternally changed by their belief in Jesus the Messiah.  For did you know that Thomas (himself a Jewish man) died in India by being run through with a spear after being stoned?  This Jewish disciple of Jesus, who at first doubted the Resurrection, died according to tradition around 70 AD(CE) while seeking to tell the Cochin Jews about the Jewish Messiah Jesus ( http://cochinsyn.com/page-cultural-origins.html).

WHY?  The transformation of the Apostle Paul from persecutor of those who followed the teachings of Rabbi Jesus to one of his most devoted followers tell me, and hopefully you, that there is something to this Jesus story that is worth investigating.  Paul gave up everything – place at the Sanhedrin, more than likely family, and monetary/social status – all because of an encounter on a dusty road outside of Damascus.  What but Messiah Jesus could have changed Paul so dramatically? WHY?   The testimony of Jewish believers in Jesus throughout the ages – such as Judah Monis, William Herschel, Felix Mendelssohn, Benjamin Disraeli, Alfred Edersheim, Israel Zoller, Boris Kornfeld, Richard Wurmbrand, Edith Stein, Vera Schlamm, Jay Sekulow, Leopold Cohn, etc., etc. (http://www.messianicassociation.org/profiles.htm) – provide us with a glimpse of those who as a book title notes, “Thought for themselves.

I have lost friends because I have shared Jesus with them.  Some have been subtle in their denunciation.  Some have been more than obvious.  However, I want you to know that I am willing to take the “slings and arrows of man” if it means that you have a chance to decide for yourself the answer to life’s ultimate question – IS JESUS THE MESSIAH?  And if He is Messiah, there is just one decision left to make … what are you going to do about this man named Jesus?

All of you (all 15 million Jewish people living in the world today) are in my heart and in my prayers.  Shalom.  God bless.

Acts 20:24,

Amy Downey