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Jerusalem, a city of great contrasts, hides many treasures. Jaffa Road, the new city’s major thoroughfare, holds one of them. Just down from the Ben Yehuda shopping street and a five minute walk from the Jaffa Gate at the Old City, up the stairs, above the bridal gowns, to the third floor, turn left and you will find the Caspari Center, Israel’s first Messianic study center.

The Caspari Center for Biblical and Jewish Studies is engaged in one of Jerusalem’s oldest pursuits, study-but in a new, contemporary and relevant manner. The center was founded in 1982 and is named after a prominent Hebrew Christian scholar of the last century who was an active evangelical leader in central Europe and Norway. The center’s name is reflective of its commitment to study, its reverence for earlier scholarship, its wide European and Scandinavian support base and its evangelical mandate.

In the early days of the Caspari Center, the Israeli Messianic scene was quite different than it is today. Then, the believers were far fewer in number and much more isolated than they are now. Those who wanted to study often found it difficult to do so in a local congregational setting since the congregations were few in number and widely scattered. Caspari saw the need and moved to meet it. The center sent tutors anywhere in the country where three or more students would meet and provided high quality Bible courses (Telem- program for Messianic training) that were specially designed for the needs of the local Israeli believer. Over the years, courses have been held from Eilat in the south to Haifa and Afula in the north.

As the body of Messiah in Israel has grown and changed so has the Caspari Center’s emphasis. Where once the center sent tutors to isolated locations where there were no congregations, now, local congregations are making increasing use of Caspari’s courses. The courses continue to be especially designed for local Hebrew-speaking believers. They are theologically sound and eminently practical. One of the most popular courses is Biblical Ethics.

For the past several years, the course books have been produced not only in Hebrew, but also in Russian and English. This means that a class can be conducted in Hebrew while the students read the materials and do their work in their native languages. Since, according to the latest statistics (from Facts and Myths about the Messianic Congregations in Israel, Mishkan 30/31, ed. Kjaer-Hansen and Skjott, published jointly by the UCCI and the Caspari Center, 1999, Jerusalem), the Messianic body in Israel today is over 40 percent native Russian speakers, it is imperative that these believers have access to study materials in their own languages.

In addition to the Telem courses, Caspari Center offers bi-annual apologetics (issues related to the defense of your faith) and an annual seminar for Shabbat School teachers. The center is constantly developing new study materials for the local Messianic believers. Often this is done in consultation with Israeli congregational leaders. A two-volume course has been recently produced on the Jewish roots of the New Testament and Jewish influences in the early church.

Caspari Center cooperates with and serves the local expression of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) and the Fellowship of Christian Students in Israel (FCSI). Joint seminars are held and Caspari offers support to the movement in leadership training, apologetics and Bible study.

A particular focus of Caspari Center has always been scholarly research. Caspari’s library contains a large selection of Messianic Jewish, rabbinic and early church literature. One of Caspari’s projects was a translation of Eusebius into Hebrew. Eusebius was the Bishop of Caesarea, a historian and scholar of the third century who wrote extensively on the development of the early church. The book has been published in cooperation with the Hebrew University Press. A current project is a comprehensive history (in English) of Jewish believers in Jesus from antiquity to the present. International leading scholars are contributing to this project.

Although the local work is the heart of Caspari’s calling, the center also has a face to the international community. Being a bridge between the Messianic community and the Christian community worldwide is a goal of the Caspari Center. The emphasis is twofold: (1) to acquaint the Christian world with the viability of the Messianic community and (2) to influence the Christian world to reclaim the biblical mandate for the priority of Jewish evangelism. To this end, Caspari offers lectures to visiting groups of pilgrims, study tours for theological teaching institutions, tutoring programs for visiting scholars and pastors and a biweekly lecture series on a wide range of topics during the academic year. The center has also sponsored and arranged for groups of leaders from Africa and Asia to come and see the roots of their faith and the new shoots of the Messianic movement of Jewish believers in Jesus. Church leaders and missionaries from places as distant as China, Japan, Korea, Mali, Hungary, Ethiopia and Bangladesh have taken part in these courses.

Caspari Center is growing with the times and is making its materials and programs available to a growing audience both in Israel and abroad. One of Caspari’s projects that appeals to both publics is the Caspari Center Media Review. The media review is a translation and summary of articles appearing in the Israeli press that have to do with Messianic Jews and Christians. This is of interest to both the local believing community and to many who are friends of Israel and the Messianic movement abroad. Archived materials are available from the early 1980s. The Media Review forms part of the Center’s scholarly research pool and is an excellent way to track the attitudes of the Israeli public towards Messianic Jews, issues of status, the struggle to safeguard democratic rights as well as opposition to the Messianic movement and the activities of the “anti-missionaries.”

From their small offices in the heart of downtown Jerusalem, the Caspari Center is serving an ever growing number of believers, both local and foreign. The center’s influence is also felt in distant places as it presents the Messianic movement to the church worldwide.

For further information, see the Caspari Center’s Web page (www.caspari.com).

Lisa Loden directs the Caspari Center’s Israeli programs.

February 22, 2002