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After an hour of prayer and discussion around a long table, eight members of Jews for Jesus (JFJ) leave their midtown Manhattan office for their monthly outreach. On this fall Thursday morning, they are focusing on the homosexual community of New York's West Village. Armed with fliers, purple signs, and wearing blue sweatshirts sporting the organization's logo, part of the group takes a cab while the rest head downtown by subway for the "sortie."

Karol Joseph, the mission's New York branch director, leads the outreach. Arriving at the northern end of Greenwich Village, she and Larry Stamm, a fellow team member, station themselves on street corners diagonally opposite each other. In 45 minutes, Stamm speaks with one Jewish person and three Catholics. One middle-aged man spits on an evangelistic broadside and hands it back to Stamm. It falls to the ground, to be trampled on by passersby.

After an hour, Joseph and Stamm stride several blocks westward, passing out tracts along the way. There they rejoin the rest of the group, which has set up a small literature table at Sheridan Square.

A man on vacation from Australia wearing a Jewish skullcap sweeps past the table and then stops briefly on the street corner. "It's the Holocaust all over again," he snaps with disgust, before moving on.

Joseph remains philosophical about reactions to their work. While most people respond with hostility, JFJ's in-your-face approach at least causes them to think about Jesus, she says.

"They don't have to agree with it," Joseph says. "But they can't avoid it when they're confronted with it."

JFJ workers also traveled to Hartford, Connecticut, on a two-week literature distribution blitz that was part of a global "Behold Your God" campaign, which focuses on 65 cities worldwide between 2001 and 2006. This time, however, opposition arose from unexpected quarters.

Karol and Saal argued for several hours at Saal's home. In the end, JFJ refused Saal's request. The group passed out nearly 12,000 leaflets, collected contact information for 38 Jewish people, and claimed two Jews came to believe in Jesus, or Y'shua, as their Messiah.

Today, it's not just Jacob versus Esau but Jacob versus Jacob. A fissure, small but nonetheless significant, has opened among Jews who believe in Jesus. Differing views on such issues as evangelism, identity, and worship have strained relations between established missionary agencies such as Jews for Jesus and a growing network of Messianic congregations.

The rhetoric is sometimes hot. Messianic theologian Mark Kinzer, president of the Messianic Jewish Theological Institute in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and rabbi of Zera Avraham in Ann Arbor, says that missions are obsolete.

"I think they should be dismantled," Kinzer says. "I think that whatever constructive role they may have played in the past, times have changed. For the present situation and the future, I see missions as primarily an obstacle."

Saal says the gulf between the missions and the Messianic congregational movement, of which his synagogue is a part, is large. "Nobody outside the movement understands how much of a disparity there is," he says.

Saal has been a congregational leader in Connecticut for 10 years. On Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath, the 50 or so members of Shuvah Yisrael, in Simsbury, worship in a building that once housed churchgoers. The congregation, which is affiliated with the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, boarded up the baptismal font and removed the crosses. The service inconspicuously incorporates Messianic additions, such as from the New Testament Book of Hebrews, to the framework of traditional Jewish liturgy.

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February 2005, Vol. 49, No. 2