Dr. John Goldberg
Dr Goldberg was one of the rabbis who came to faith in Jerusalem in the early nineteenth century, whose story we learn from Ewald’s journal. He belonged to the “perushim” sect of Ashkenazi Jews – the modern successors of the Pharisees.
He was baptised in Christ Church by Rev. John Nicolayson in 1843, and consequently suffered much persecution, losing all his property. He was obliged to leave Jerusalem, and traveled to Cairo, and then to Salonica, preaching the Gospel to his fellow-Jews wherever he went. In 1851 he was appointed missionary in Constantinople, and in 1860 in Smyrna, also in Turkey.
Goldberg, according to Bernstein’s testimony, was a spiritually-minded and lovable man.
His last years were spent in England, where he contributed two articles on “The Language of Christ” and “The Future Division of the Land of Israel” to the Hebrew Christian Witness in 1874.
Sources
Bernstein, A. Jewish Witnesses for Christ. 1909. Keren Ahvah Meshichit, new edition, 1999.
Ewald, F.C., Journal of Missionary Labours in the City of Jerusalem 1842-44. (1846)