A TREE OF LIFE GROWS IN BROOKLYN

One important lesson that may be drawn from the history of world missions is that it is impossible to predict just how God will work. The Apostle Paul's Macedonian vision of one man pleading for help eventually brought the Gospel to Europe. In other instances, the will of God is made known through the collective wisdom that He imparts to His chosen servants - "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us..." (Acts 15:28).

In some instances, prayer brings guidance. In others, the work of God seems to spring up without any preparation at all. In these cases, it is the task of God's people to seek the proper response to the marvelous thing that the Spirit of God seems to be birthing in their midst.

The work of Chosen People Ministries in the Russian Jewish community of Brooklyn, New York, appears to belong to this last type. A series of circumstances and people have been brought together in a way orchestrated by God for a purpose. The lives that have been touched number in the hundreds - and perhaps thousands. It is a story that has no ending yet, for it continues to unfold.

France and the Jewish people: A "love story" gone wrong?
By Guy Athia, Director of Chosen People Ministries in France

Since the revolution of 1789 and the emancipation of the Jews proclaimed by Napoleon a few years later, there were several attempts to return to the previous status for the Jews living in France. The most recent one was during World War II, with France's Vichy government of collaboration with the Nazis.

Until the Six-Day War in 1967, France provided Israel with military supplies and had a vey close relationship with the state of Israel. However, the situation changed with the adoption of what is known today as the "Arabic politic" of France led by General De Gaulle. It's interesting to see that in the same period of the 1960s the Jewish population of the country grew a lot with the Sephardic Jews who came from North Africa.

Today, the Jews of Latin America reside mainly in Argentina (250,000) and Brazil (130,000). Where did they come from, and when did they arrive? The answers to these questions are to be found on another continent altogether: Europe. At the end of the fifteenth century, the Inquisition was in full force in Spain and Portugal. Rather than submit to forcible conversion, some Jewish people chose to suffer torture and death. Others agreed to renounce their Jewish identity.

The Jewish people have a long history in the lands of the former Soviet Union, perhaps even to the end of the Babylonian Captivity (539 BC) and certainly to the period before Jesus. From the 12th century onward, the Russian Jewish community has played an important role in Jewish history.

It has been a troubled history, however, punctuated by periods of relative tolerance followed by horrific persecution. Literally hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed in the pogroms that took place from the 1880s to the early 1900s.

Like many people in Russia, the Jewish people looked to the Communists for deliverance from the Czarist regime. "Could things have been worse?" they reasoned. The answer, of course, was an emphatic, "Yes!"