Israel Today recently interviewed David Serner and Alexander Goldberg, the authors of Jesus-Believing Israelis: Exploring Messianic Fellowship, published by Jerusalem’s Caspari Center in 2022. In their book, the two reported on the results of their survey that set out to discover how many Messianic Jews there are in Israel.

In their study, Serner and Goldberg tried to survey all Messianic fellowships in Israel, including house churches and as well mainline denominations from Pentecostal to Roman Catholics.

They did not include Arab Christian congregations in their survey and not all groups agreed to participate and some provided incomplete information.

To qualify as a Messianic Jew, the individuals had to believe Jesus was both fully human and divine and fulfilled Israel’s Law of Return requiring at least one grandparent to be Jewish.

Their survey revealed that there are:

• 280 fellowships/churches in Israel
• 15,323 members in 273 churches (They were unable to contact seven groups);
• 8,125 of the adults are Messianic Jews

READ: How Many Messianic Jews Actually Live in Israel?

The strange story of Rabbi Kaduri

This number does not include those who are attending Jewish synagogues but believe that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

When Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri died in 2006, over 200,000 people lined the streets of Israel for his funeral procession.

But shortly before his death, the Rabbi, believed to be over 106 years old, gave his followers a sealed envelope and said they could not open it until a year after his death. The attached note said the envelope contained the name of the Jewish Messiah.

When his followers opened it in 2007, they were shocked to discover that Kaduri had declared Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah. READ: Famous Jewish Rabbi codes Jesus as the Messiah

Considering Israel has a population of 8.9 million, only a small percentage are Messianic Jews. Nevertheless, the Apostle Paul saw a day coming when the Jews would accept Jesus as their Messiah:

²⁶ And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,“The Deliverer will come from Zion,
    he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; (Romans 11:26 ESV)