Gideon R. Lederer 1804-1879
Lederer was born in Pesth, (Hungary) in 1804 to a rabbi, and received a solid rabbinical education. Two prominent Czech rabbis were among his teachers. He became a rabbi himself for a time, and then a businessman near Pesth. Through the witness of missionaries he came to faith and was baptized on July 15, 1844.
Gideon became a lay-missionary of the Jewish Mission of the Free Church of Scotland in Pesth, 1844-53; London, 1853-4; and then worked in New York, 1855-76 with the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews.
Aaron Bernstein, author of “Jewish Witnesses for Christ”, who knew him personally wrote “He laboured for the rest of his days, as a humble city missionary, with much blessing. He edited a periodical entitled, “The Israelite Indeed”, and the writer knew him as such an one himself” .
In New York Lederer began to exert a great influence toward uniting the scattered Hebrew-Christians for larger and better efforts to bring the gospel to their Jewish brethren.
He died in New York in 1879.
Sources
Perlman, Robert. Bridging Three Worlds, p. 95
From Necessity to Virtue: The Hebrew Christianity of G.R. Lederer; ILIFF Review 37 (Winter 1980), 27-33
Bernstein, A. Jewish Witnesses for Christ, p. 330