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The Spark Behind Zion's Fire
Many American Jews find it galling that prominent members of the Christian Right began their lives as Jews, only to embrace another faith. These include: Jay Sekulow, who argues religious rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice; Marvin Olasky, editor of World magazine, who is credited with coining the term "compassionate conservatism"; and the Rev. Louis Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, who appears frequently in the media.
The latest to join them in the national spotlight is Marvin Rosenthal, the 65-year-old founder of Zion's Hope Ministry and developer of The Holy Land Experience. The independent Baptist minister is descended from Orthodox Russian Jewish immigrants, and grew up in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood of Philadelphia, where his family owned a candy store and attended a Conservative synagogue. Marvin was bar mitzvahed there, about the same time a determined Christian woman began calling on his mother; two years later, Yetta Rosenthal "accepted" Jesus and, at the age of 15, Marvin says, he "personally, privately, in our home, invited Christ into my life."
But Rosenthal had some spiritual traveling yet to do -- joining the Marine Corps after high school, turning "away from religion" and working as a dance instructor before enrolling, successively, in the Philadelphia College of Bible and Dallas Theological Seminary. In 1968, after his ordination as a Baptist minister, he joined an established missionary group, Friends of Israel Gospel Ministries, in southern New Jersey. At this point in his life he began calling himself a "Hebrew Christian," editing the ministry's magazine and serving as director for the next 16 years.
In the early 1970s, old-line Jewish missionary groups like his...