This year (2016/5777) Hanukkah and Christmas fall on the same day. December 25 is Christmas Day, and also the first day of Hanukkah. So the question is, Do these two holidays have anything in common? Although the two holidays have completely different backgrounds, they are both “festivals of light.” Both are celebrating that the light […]
Caspari Center hosted a seminar on fundraising in the beginning of November. At the two-day seminar, 16 participants were introduced to key development topics to help their non-profit organizations achieve their funding goals. The seminar was led by Gerald H. Twombly, founder and executive director of Development Marketing Associates (DMA), an international consulting group committed […]
But I Tell You During the past few years I’ve had the privilege to get to know two Jewish views on the Sermon on the Mount. One comes from a Jewish rabbi and the other from a Jewish professor (for the sake of clarity I’ll call them Rabbi Zvi and Professor Uri). Both of them […]
The 1st of November (or the next Sunday after that) is celebrated as the All Saints’ Day in the Western Christianity. Originally the day was to commemorate the believers who had died because of their faith as martyrs. Later on the All Saints’ Day has gotten more broad meanings by becoming the memorial day of […]
Walk down any given street in Israel, and you will notice Israelis around you: walking … and staring down at their smartphones; waiting for a bus … and staring down at their smartphones; crossing the street … and staring down at their smartphones. According to statistics compiled by www.internetworldstats.com, 73% of Israelis use the internet. […]
“I envy you, you are doubly blessed! You are Jewish and have Jesus. I only have Jesus,” came a comment from the audience after a speech given by a former Caspari Center colleague touring Finland some time ago. While theologically misguided, this comment demonstrated an appreciation and respect many Finnish Christians have for the Jewish […]
The first time I remember reading that there’s a day dedicated to the remembrance of the destruction of the temple was during my first years as a pastor in the Lutheran Church in Finland. The note was in the lectionary that contains the texts that are to be read in churches on Sundays, and which […]
When a Protestant Christian meets a Messianic Jew, they often find that they use the most basic terms in very different ways and with very different meanings. At its best, these encounters may lead to a clearer understanding of faith on both sides if we are open to new questions and perspectives we have never […]
That question was the opening of a casual email from a colleague the other day. Just a little over a week after Yom ha-Shoah—the day when Israel remembers the victims of the Holocaust—I was tempted to answer by writing something like, “Way better than it treated my people a few decades ago.” I was there […]
The Messianic Jewish movement is a newcomer on the missiological scene: an “insider movement” that tries to plant a New Testament–based faith in the Messiah into Jewish tradition and to bridge the church and synagogue traditions. While Judaism in the first century was a pluriform tradition that included followers of Jesus, rabbinic tradition from the […]