Assemblies in the Holy Land

Hebrew and English speaking

Meetings:

Wednesday 19.00   

Saturday 10.00 Breaking of Bread; 11.00 Meeting.

Contact:

 Brother John Salinger +972-4-8391846

Address:

 59 Allenby Road, Haifa, Israel 31 090.

Telephone: +972-4-8539198

Email: saliplus@netvision.net.il

Hebrew English Arabic speaking

Meetings:

Sunday: 9.30 Breaking of Bread; 10.30 Bible Study

Wednesday: 19.00 ministry  followed by prayer meeting

Contact:

George Khalil,

All day +972-4601-1768,  

Morning local time  +972-4657-9467

Email: info@yesholyland,com

Address:

The Nazareth Hospital Road  5050/21

P.O. Box 51240

Nazareth 16100, Israel

Hebrew English Arabic speaking

Info will be posted soon

Hebrew English Arabic speaking

Meetings:

First Sunday of the month: 10.00 Breaking of Bread

Every other Sunday of the month: 18.00 Breaking of Bread

Thursday Prayer meeting: 18 - 18.30

Thursday: Bible Study

Contact:

Brother Azez Da'eem

Email : a_daeem@yahoo.com

Telphon: +972-4986 2646  Mobile: +972-5286 14245

Address:

Christian Brethren Assembly

P.o.box 1066

Ibillin 30012

Hebrew and English speaking

Meetings:

Saturday: 10.30 Breaking of Bread; 11.30 Bible Study

Wednesday: 18.30 ministry followed by prayer meeting

First Friday of each month: 18:30 Bible study followed by a fellowship meal

Contact:

Website: http://www.baj.co.il/eng/emain

Email: kmyt@walla.co.il

Phone: +972-3-6827146
(In Israel: +972-03 6827146, in the Tel Aviv area: 6827146)
You can leave your message in English on the answering machine
and we will contact you

Address:

P.O. BOX 8185
Jaffa, 61081, Israel

The first assembly missionaries to work in Israel were Mr. and Mrs. D. C. Joseph, who commenced in Jerusalem in 1888. They found, as many have done since, that it is extremely difficult to lead a Jew to Christ, but they had the joy of baptizing a middle-aged Jew in the Jordan in 1891 and, in due course, a small company was meeting regularly to remember the Lord. The Josephs moved to Haifa in 1896, in the hope of starting      another assembly there, but in 1899 they felt led to return to England to engage in the evangelization of Jews in Bethnal Green, London. From time to time they made visits to Israel, but for relatively short periods.

Mr. and Mrs. S. Wasserzug spent a brief period 1898—99 in Palestine on leaving Tunisia but he did not feel led to settle there. Miss E. Schmidt was commended from South Australia in 1909 and served the Lord in Haifa, when the population was predominantly Arab. The women were ignorant and fanatical and she sought to reach them through medical work. There was little response from the few Jews there. In 1910 she became also held for churches connected with the London and Haifa Mission to the Jews.

Dr. and Mrs. E. Shelley, from Australian assemblies, started meetings in their home in 1917. Numbers were comparatively small and response was limited. Their son, Dr. J. E. Shelley, subsequently visited the country from time to time to help in the testimony.

James W. Clapham, a school teacher, left New Zealand for the U.K. in 1926 and en route visited India and Palestine. He was so gripped by the fact that there were no assemblies in Palestine and that virtually no assembly witness had been effective in Bible lands since the time of Anthony Norris Groves, that he returned to the Middle East to engage in the work. He was a great personal worker and loved visiting. Within a year he had the joy of seeing a small assembly established at Haifa, where meetings were held in a small room. Three Armenians and two Orthodox Jews had been converted and the assembly was composed of various nationalities. Meetings were also held for Muslims. In 1928 there were 39 baptisms at Haifa, and Mr. Clapham, an inveterate traveler, had visited many of the Jewish colonies, the villages around Galilee and Jerusalem, of where some believers began meeting in a house. Riots did some harm in 1929, but the assembly held fast.

Most of Mr. Clapham’s journeys were taken with a tent and that elementary camping equipment, as accommodation of any kind was limited. In 1929 he transferred his base to Jerusalem and made regular visits to Jaffa. By 1930, when he returned to New Zealand on furlough, there were assemblies at Jerusalem, Jaffa, Tel Aviv and Haifa; in the last there were sixty in fellowship. He married Miss Florence Tweedie of Hawke’s Bay and they returned to Palestine in 1931. During the following eight years they travelled to many centres to hold special meetings or to instruct the believers more perfectly in church principles. An orphanage was commenced at Jaffa, where A. L. Goold was based, but Mr. Clapham’s main interest always lay in the local churches in different parts of the Middle East. Holding meetings with N. Aboud, H. Mitchell, J. Morris and others, visiting homes, and talking to people in the streets led to the of formation of assemblies in several centres. Then visits were paid that, later to build up the believers. He felt strongly the strategy of reaching key cities with the gospel. In 1947 he and his wife made their base in Cyprus, but still frequently visited Israel. In 1950 he reported that all the nine assemblies were scattered, except for a few believers who broke bread in Haifa and Tel Aviv.

In 1929 Solomon Ostrovsky, a Hebrew Christian, was commended to full-time work by the assembly at Haifa and a small printing press, purchased by Mr. Clapham, was set up in a small room adjoining the Bethesda Hall to print gospel literature in Hebrew and English. In 1931 Mr. and Mrs. Frank E. Cooper, who had been helping in a children’s home and operating a small gospel printing press in New Zealand,  were commended for work in Palestine, but He and his first wife were actually in Fiji before they went to Palestine. A printing press had been provided by a group of brethren in Palmerston North and the Coopers had been asked to set it up in Jerusalem, to produce literature for distribution in Bible lands. They had the assistance of Vahram Touryan, an Armenian, and Solomon Ostrovsky, both of whom could speak and write fluently in four or five languages. They met with the small assembly at Jerusalem, which was held in a German sister’s house and was then composed mostly of Germans.

Mr. and Mrs. W. Marcinkowski began to serve the Lord in Haifa among Jews in 1932 and continued for thirty years. The following year Mr. and Mrs. S. Ostrovsky moved to Tel Aviv, the rapidly growing Jewish city. Because of the strong antagonism to Jews who turned to Christianity, they found it impossible to rent a house in the centre of the city and had to live on the outskirts. They found — as other missionaries did — that it was extremely difficult for converts from Judaism; such were liable to be boycotted, dismissed from employment and ostracized by the community. However, his testimony was blessed and later a modern hall was acquired for the work.

In 1933 a regular magazine in Armenian was commenced, and thousands of tracts were being printed in Hebrew, Turkish, Armenian and English. In 1936 the press was moved to a new site in Upper Baaca on the outskirts of the city. The assembly was growing, but curfew regulations made all evening meetings impossible. With the build-up of British troops in the country, the demand for English tracts and booklets increased tremendously. Although there were paper shortages, they managed to keep the work going throughout the Second World War and were able to secure permits to send literature to Egypt and Syria, despite restrictions on tract distribution in the streets locally. Because of illness the Coopers unfortunately had to leave the country. After his first wife died in London he returned to New Zealand. After marrying again, he and his wife went to India to serve the Lord for a short time. Vahram Touryan then took over responsibility for the press, but had to leave it in 1948 because of wholesale massacres and evacuation, and at that time Solomon Ostrovsky reported that a radical change had taken place in the work in Palestine, the two assemblies in Jaffa, Armenian and Arab, practically ceased to exist - all the believers having left the country. It was later learnt that these believers had strengthened existing testimonies in Jordan, Cyprus and elsewhere. In one case four families started a work in Jordan where no evangelical witness had existed before. Eventually Professor Marcinkowski and Solomon Ostrovsky obtained permission from the Israeli military authorities to visit Jaffa and found only two elderly Arab ladies left.

In Tel Aviv about a dozen young Hebrew Christians also left the country. Dr. Yuke’s clinic which had been started in 1937            was broken into and ransacked. Alterations had to be made in the spacious premises where the meetings were held so that Dr. Yuke (in fellowship in the assembly but working under the auspices of an American mission) could continue his medical work.

Professor Marcinkowski, assisted by his gifted wife, was a        that tower of strength in Haifa at that time of crisis. He did much to encourage the believers who remained, and thus kept the Bethesda assembly intact, though somewhat smaller numerically, but the Armenian and Arab assemblies in that town disintegrated.

Later that year Misses MacLaren and Reid, from Canada, reported that the machinery had been stolen, the windows and            doors had been broken, and the charred remains of shelves and literature were all that was left.

In Nazareth a dear Arab brother, in great danger from his fellow Arabs, bravely witnessed of the Lord to all around him and encouraged his fellow believers in their stand for the Lord.

Some time later Solomon Ostrovsky was given a press by the Finnish Mission in Jerusalem and under very able management the press has developed into one of the best equipped presses in Jerusalem. He was also able to commence radio broadcasts from Monte Carlo which continued for about two years. By request some of the messages have been published and are still in circulation in Israel.

A. Leonard Goold went out from Auckland to Palestine in 1930 and settled in Jaffa to learn Arabic. At that time it was not uncommon in conferences for a message to be given in English and translated into Russian, Turkish and Arabic, with eight different nationalities listening. For four years he concentrated his efforts in Palestine during the mounting tension between Arabs and Jews, particularly in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Tel Aviv. There was a great deal of opposition from the Muslims, who were bitter against people being converted. Jews were also fanatically opposed to Christianity and stoned buildings and beat tins while meetings were going on. However, through cottage meetings in Jaffa and Ramleh, the work slowly grew. Mr. and Mrs. Ostrovsky opened a shop in Tel Aviv to sell Scriptures and this also caused opposition. In 1940 Mr. Goold married Miss Margaret Moore and the following year they went to India, but he paid visits to Israel in 1952 and 1961.

Other missionaries from New Zealand included Mr. and Mrs. George Knowles, who arrived in 1932. He described Jerusalem on their arrival as a ‘city of yells, bells and smells’, but they soon settled down to an effective ministry in the gospel and in the instruction of believers. During their fifteen years in the

Middle East he frequently used a model of the tabernacle in teaching and this attracted great interest. In 1936 to 1939 they worked on in the face of continual unrest and strong anti-British feeling, armed robberies, murder in cold blood, arson, sabotage and  abductions. When they left in 1946 they felt they had been living on the edge of a  volcano. In a report at the time he said:

The situation has deteriorated very much since 1946. It was bad before then with continual outbreaks of lawlessness, resulting in the loss of many lives and many hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of property. One of the worst acts of the Jewish terrorists was the blowing up of the King David Hotel, which housed the Secretariat, with the loss of 91 lives and injury of 46 others. As a result of the outrage the government took severe security measures and closed all shops and offices (mostly run by Jews) in the centre of the town, bricking them up and placing miles of barbed wire in the streets, with concrete pill-boxes at various points. Curfew was also imposed for a time. The Y.M.C.A., where we held our meetings, was placed out of bounds because it was opposite the King David Hotel.

The testimony in Israel really reached its peak in the period 1930—48, when assemblies were being formed in most of the important cities and missionaries were carrying the message to the villages and towns throughout the country. During that period also, many British subjects were engaged in the administration of the mandate, in running the Post Office and in the employment of business firms. Some of them were in assembly fellowship and others were converted while in the country. At one time the English-speaking assembly in Jerusalem was a flourishing one. In 1947 an assembly, composed mainly of Armenians, was also started in the old city of Jerusalem, which was then in Jordanian hands.

Miss Essie Bernstein of London, a Hebrew Christian, spent       20 years in the Lord’s work in Jerusalem from 1933 to 1953. For others the time was shorter. Gordon Trounce, commended from New South Wales, sailed first to Cyprus and then took up work in Palestine in 1937 but after a few months ill-health compelled his return to Australia.

Miss M. MacLaren and Miss L. Reid were commended by Central Hall, Toronto, in 1938, although Miss Reid was absent from the field for some years because of her mother’s illness, Their work lay chiefly in Jerusalem with Miss Bernstein, but they also served in Tel Aviv. During the 1948 war their home and furniture were completely destroyed, but they subsequently became the caretakers of a beautifully furnished flat, large enough to seat fifty people for a meeting. The hostilities considerably reduced the size of the assembly and the work had to be carried on by the sisters. Miss Reid eventually returned home in 1957.

 Mr. and Mrs. E. Robson left Syria for Palestine in 1939 and laboured there until 1945. They commenced a testimony in the Arab city of Nazareth and developed an assembly of 20, with three preaching centres in Nazareth and two in nearby villages. The Sunday school attracted 90 children, and 40 adults regularly attended meetings. There were some conversions and baptisms before they had to leave the country.

J. A. Morris spent five years, 1944 to 1949, in the work after leaving Egypt and moving on to Cyprus. From time to time he had previously visited the country with H. Mitchell and N. Aboud to help J. W. Clapham in special meetings. Dr. L. Wreshner also spent about the same time, 1944 to 1950 in the Lord’s work in Palestine.

Sydney A. Palmer of New Zealand, who, with his wife, were engaged in the work in Cyprus, spent a brief period, 1948 to 1949, in Palestine with J. W. Clapham, with whom he had also worked in Nicosia.

After many years of experience in business and in Christian work of various kinds in the U.S.A., Harry and Bess Medrow became exercised about the spiritual need of the Middle East. He secured an appointment with the Standard Oil Company in Arabia where he learned Arabic and in 1947 they were commended by the San Francisco assembly to work in Palestine. The Egyptian authorities unfortunately refused them permission to go to the School of Oriental Languages in Cairo to study the language, but in 1949 they went to Palestine and located at Nazareth. There he preached for three days each week at a clinic to hundreds of Muslims, nominal Christians, and Druze, while Mrs. Medrow had women’s meetings for prayer and Bible study. They also visited the Arab villages of Maghar and Kafr Yasif, where there was an assembly of 14 and four baptisms had taken place in four years. He preached regularly at clinics at Tel Aviv and Jaffa and then at Ramleh, going on to Jerusalem to break bread. The Medrows also looked after the Emmaus correspondence courses in Arabic, Hebrew, French and English. The doctor and Russian nurses at the Tel Aviv clinic were highly respected and this helped in preaching. At Rishon le Zion there were a few Jewish converts. The hall was unfortunately commandeered by the authorities, so it became necessary to meet in a clinic.

Leslie S. Rainey and his wife spent 1954 in Jerusalem before going on to Central Africa, and his ministry met with much blessing among the Jewish people. Miss A. Thierstein from Switzerland gave help in the work in Jerusalem for fifteen years from 1956 to 1971, while Mr. and Mrs. McClenahan continued there with the Arabic work. Professor David Payne spent some time in Jerusalem, for studies, as did also Mr. and Mrs. Cyril Hocking, who visited the city and help in the assembly. In addition to the ordinary assembly work in Jerusalem, there is also a Messianic assembly, led by a body of four elders, who are Israelis, all permanent residents. The object of this assembly is to witness to Israeli Jews by Israeli Jews in their own country.

The assembly meets in the Shabbat (with breaking of bread) and on Wednesdays for Bible study. All meetings are in Hebrew, but translation is provided when needed. The Messianic assembly is developing an exclusive work among children of believers from all over the country and summer camps are run in July and August. The desire is to see the children growing in an Israeli context rather than in a foreign one. Victor Smadja and his colleagues in Yanetz are publishing evangelical books in Hebrew and Arabic. On behalf of the Bible Society they translated and published the new edition of the Hebrew New Testament, 30,000 having been completed so far. The Living New Testament in Hebrew has also been produced.

A conference centre at Haifa is geared towards teaching and building up Israeli believers in the Christian faith. Seminars in different subjects are arranged lasting two to five days and Bible teachers from Israel and other countries participate. Radio broadcasts have been given over Radio Monte Carlo.

At Jaffa, Miss D. Najjar and Miss Huda were responsible for the Girls’ Orphanage for some years, but it has now unfortunately ceased to exist. At Ramleh a blind evangelist named Essa el Eiss continued for many years with the little assembly, aided by visits by S. Ostrovsky. At Kafr Yasif, one of the largest Arab villages in Israel, the assembly received most help from a young brother and his wife. Mr. Saleem had a large Sunday school and devoted all his spare time to Christian work despite his poor economic condition. Miss E. Muir spent three years, 1949 to 1952 in the work. Miss Mary Kilbride has worked among Jews in New Jerusalem since 1962 and still spends a very busy time there. While there are many difficulties, there are signs of blessing. Religious liberty is not complete though. For example, a young man, who preached the gospel in the open air, was stoned, beaten, arrested, imprisoned and finally expelled from the country — for creating a tumult!

In February 1947 Mr. Cooper (Mrs. Cooper had died earlier), Miss Bernstein, Miss MacLaren, Miss Reid, and Mr. and Mrs. D. T. L. Howell (who had just arrived), were evacuated by order of the government, although some were subsequently able to return. The assemblies were consequently left without any European help, except the one at Jerusalem, where bank and government officials were still left. The meetings in Jerusalem had to be held in the Coopers’ vacated house since the believers had lost the assembly premises.

Several of the earlier missionaries sought to reach the Arab people. In more recent times, H. L. Medrow and George Wald have given themselves almost exclusively to the Arab work. When Mr. Medrow died in 1965 (his wife remained on until 1967), 400 people attended the funeral, including a former mayor, a Greek Orthodox priest, an Anglican priest, an Irish Baptist minister and a Nazarene pastor. The Nazareth assembly, in which he laboured for so long, has now its own hall — formerly a clinic of the Nazareth hospital of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society. In 1991 the assembly moved to a bigger and better place in town

George Wald was formerly the manager of the Nile Mission Press when it was located in Egypt. When expelled by the Egyptian government in 1961 he went to Israel to continue his work among the Arabs, and his faithful labours have been attended with blessing. In Nazareth and other parts of the country there is regular (but discreet) tract distribution. Emmaus correspondence courses are offered in Arabic on subjects relating to the Christian faith, and there has been a very good response.

*Taken from the book: The Restless Middle East,

published by: Echoes of Serves 1982

Since the above was written in 1982, there have been some changes in leadership in the Haifa, Jaffa and Nazareth, and Ibillin, and Haifa Arab assemblies have been added to the number of functioning assemblies as listed above. Jerusalem does not have an assembly any longer, although some sisters meet together in a home.