Fake rabbi plants billboards across New York City advertising Christian proselytizing website

Billboards with “Jews.com” written on them have been appearing in recent weeks at various locations across New York City, including Brooklyn and Manhattan, as well as heavily Jewish areas of New Jersey.

They are not the first Jew-related billboards to be placed across the city; the bright pink “Jew Belong” campaign and Chabad’s “Born to be a Yid” adverts are omnipresent.

But while Jew Belong and Born to be a Yid are both campaigns run by Jewish organizations and are intended to strengthen Jewish identity among Jews, Jews.com is not.

The website is ostensibly an educational resource about the Hebrew scriptures. But after a short scroll, it becomes clear that the website is aimed at converting Jews to belief in Jesus.

All articles, videos, and question boxes by “Rabbi” Kurt Schneider begin by referencing passages from the Torah before progressing into an appeal for belief in Jesus as the messiah and encouraging Jews to reevaluate their preconceptions.

Site compares Hassidic rebbes to Jesus

Schneider speaks about hassidic Jews, viewing rebbes as intermediaries between them and God, for example, before telling the viewer that “Jesus is the true intermediary; he can bring you into a direct personal relationship with [God].”

He also says, “Jesus is not outside Israel’s story. Jesus, known in Hebrew as Yeshua, is the messiah God promised to Israel.”

Schneider says that Jewish people have struggled to accept Jesus as the messiah because “He has often been portrayed not as a Jew but as a gentile” in culture and art.

“For centuries, much of Western art has presented Jesus as fair-skinned and European, disconnected from the culture, bloodline, and traditions of the Jewish people. This has made it harder for many of our people to see him for who he truly is: The Jewish messiah.”

Schneider then cites a passage from Isaiah which says the messiah will suffer before he is recognized and honored, using this to evidence his claim that Jesus has simply not yet been recognized by the Jews.

“I am appealing to you not to reject Jesus simply because he was crucified. His earliest followers were Jews, and they bore witness that God raised him from the dead and that they had seen him alive afterward,” he said.

Kurt Schneider is not a rabbi, nor has he ever been ordained as such.

While born to Jewish parents in Ohio, he “came to Jesus” and has since self-described as a messianic Jew focused on proselytizing.

At the age of 20, he says, the Lord supernaturally appeared by sending him back 2,000 years “to visibly witness Yeshua being crucified.”

He says that his parents had him kidnapped by “the most famous deprogrammer in the country to deprogram me,” and then sent him to a psychiatric hospital.

After his release, he went to Toccoa Falls Bible College where he was awarded the Preacher of the Year Award. He then became a church minister.

Schneider runs the TV and radio ministry Discovering the Jewish Jesus, aimed at proclaiming “the messiah to Jewish people and the world.”

A lot of the content involves the bastardization of Jewish scripture, holidays, and traditions for proselytistic purposes – notably, the reframing of Yom Kippur as a holiday about Jesus.

Christian proselytizing organization conducts campaigns in Israel

Schneider’s organization also sends missionaries to Jews around Israel and Africa to bring them to Jesus.

The website notes, “God has placed a specific burden on Rabbi Schneider to lovingly, directly, and faithfully bring the truth of messiah Yeshua to Jewish people.”

As a result of this supposed God-given mission, the organization does a lot of work in Israel, including creating Hebrew billboard campaigns with the question: “What if he is right?” and the broadcast Discovering The Jewish Jesus, which, according to the website, reaches “200 nations worldwide” and “an estimated 97% of television homes in Israel.”

There is also a Hebrew version of the website.

While often claiming to be messianic Jewish and wearing a kippah and a tallit, Schneider has also publicly identified as Christian.

“A Christian is someone who is not born a Christian; technically, a Christian is someone who makes the decision to follow the Christ. I am a Jew, and I believe in the Jewish messiah,” he has said.