Julia Fisher talks to Claude Ezagouri, a Messianic Jewish pastor in Tiberias in northern Israel. He described his early life in Algeria before his family moved to France; his marriage to Michelle, a French lady who converted to Judaism; their decision to go and live in Israel where they joined a kibbutz and Claude worked on a banana plantation. And then the upset when Claude realised that Yeshua, or Jesus, really was the Messiah … a decision that almost destroyed their marriage. However, several years later, Claude and Michelle are the leaders of a Messianic congregation in Tiberias – a city on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. This is a place many Christians visit and it’s easy to think that Israel is a Holy Land where everybody believes in Jesus. But the reality is very different as Claude describes.
Our aim is to build bridges… To build bridges of understanding and support, in a spirit of reconciliation, between believers (both Jewish and Arab) in the Holy Land (Israel and the Palestinian Areas) and Christians worldwide.
