Judah Monis: “First” American Jewish Believer -- By: Jim R. Sibley

Journal: Faith and Mission
Volume: FM 20:2 (Spring 2003)
Article: Judah Monis: “First” American Jewish Believer
Author: Jim R. Sibley


Judah Monis: “First” American Jewish Believer

Jim R. Sibley

Coordinator of Jewish Ministries
North American Mission Board
Southern Baptist Convention
4200 North Pointe Parkway
Alpharetta, Georgia 30022

Who was the first Jewish believer in North America? With no desire to sound Clintonesque, it all depends on what one means by the word “first.” In truth, only the Lord knows. Hugh J. Schonfield says, “When Christopher Columbus set out on his voyage that led to the discovery of the New World, there were ... Jewish Christians among the members of his own crew.”1 Unfortunately, he offers no documentation. Others have tried (unsuccessfully, in the author’s opinion) to prove that Christopher Columbus, himself, was a Christian of Jewish descent.2

Arthur Hertzberg reports of a later period, when:

A family of Jewish extraction had come ... to North American shores, to join the Pilgrims. Moses Simonson landed in Plymouth Harbor in 1621, two years after the Mayflower; he and his family were reputed to be “from the Jewish settlement in Amsterdam.” The Simonsons had probably already turned Christian in Holland before joining the Pilgrims, or, at the very least, they converted in Plymouth. One of their daughters is known to have married a grandson of Miles Standish and John Alden.3

In the late 1690s, Cotton Mather (in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was finishing work on his Magnolia Christi Americana, an extensive account of the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and an inspiring story about the Puritans. At the same time, he was also writing a manual on Jewish evangelism.4 It consisted of a set of scriptural texts from the Hebrew Scriptures, designed to establish the truth of the gospel and of Christian teaching.5 Whether or not Mather’s book had anything to do with it, Lee M. Friedman writes of “the Jew, Simon, who in [September 17] 1702 was baptized in Charlestown [also, Charlestowne], Massachusetts, and assumed the name of Barns to disappear in the surrounding community.”6 In this, he must have succeeded, for nothing more is known of him.

There was, however, a direct connection between Mather’s book and the salvation of another Jewish man named Simon, who came to faith in Jesus (Hebrew, Yeshua) in South Carolina. Mather took great encouragement from the fact that his

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