Rosen was often quoted as saying, “God has a great sense of humor letting an over-aged, overweight and overbearing person like me lead a youth movement.”
Moishe Rosen, founder of Jews for Jesus, died May 19th in San Francisco, California, after a protracted battle with prostate cancer. He was 78.
Rosen, the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, was raised in Denver, Colorado, where his family attended an Orthodox synagogue.
In 1953, at the age of 21, he and his Jewish wife, Ceil, came to believe that Jesus was their Messiah. Shortly thereafter, he felt a call to ministry and after completing his theological studies at Northeastern Bible College in New Jersey in 1957, he was ordained to the ministry at Trinity Baptist Church in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
From 1957-1972 he served in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco with the American Board of Missions to the Jews. By the late sixties, early seventies, the Jesus Movement and the beginnings of the Jews for Jesus movement converged.
Rosen took the lead in getting young Jewish followers of Jesus to band together and experiment with unconventional methods and strategies to communicate the gospel to their own people. In September 1973, Rosen’s time with the ABMJ came to an end and Jews for Jesus, the organization, was born.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the organization gained national recognition as he and his staff engaged in high profile evangelistic activities.
For example, Rosen developed a new form of gospel literature called broadsides which have been handed out one by one on college campuses, in shopping districts, wherever there is foot traffic and the opportunity to engage in conversations.
His first attempt, “A Message From Squares,” was handwritten and drawn by him. The homemade style is still employed with over fifty million broadsides distributed to date. Rosen saw the value in using compelling contemporary literature, art, music, poetry and drama to get the gospel message across. He encouraged the development of Jewish gospel music groups and drama teams and looked for ways to get them seen and heard.
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