During the late 1940s the Norwegian theologian and author Per Faye-Hansen had closely observed the activities of the Messianic Jew Abram Poljak in Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel. Those years were the twilight of the British Mandate in “Palestine” when David Ben Gurion, the esteemed leader of the emerging Jewish nation, prepared to declare the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

Why Haifa?

Hansen would have been thrilled to read in one of Poljak’s journalistic reports that: “On Friday, February 21, 1948, in the house of [Moshe Immanuel] Ben-Maeir, [on Abbas street], the first Jewish Christian Community service in Haifa took place, attended by nine people – whilst outside in the street a Jewish-Arab battle was in progress. Bullets flew past our window.”

The formation of a small yet independent fellowship of Jewish Yeshua-believers in Haifa, while the hostilities were still going on around them, was completely unrelated to any church or missionary organization. This was a self-reliant achievement for the local and verily isolated...