Rabbi Abraham Jakob Schwartzenberg
When Rabbi Schwartzenberg (1762-1843) was serving as a rabbi in Kasimir, Poland, someone gave him a copy of the New Testament. The rabbi read the New Testament, was deeply impressed and began to speak of it, encouraging others to read it also. He was convinced of the truth, but felt he needed to know more. He eventually travelled to Lublin, where he had heard of an evangelical minister. This man received him coldly and with suspicion. So the rabbi finally decided to immerse himself, in the same manner in which John the Immerser had immersed his disciples. He went to a river and dipped himself three times.
Rabbi Schwartzenberg eventually met a well-loved and respected missionary living in Warsaw, Dr. McCaul, who was known for his love for the Jewish people and for his knowledge of the Bible and Jewish literature. Rabbi Schwartzenberg visited with him and began to study with him.
The rabbi was baptized by Dr. McCaul on November 8th, 1828, at the age of sixty-four years old. In addition to his former name of Abraham, he also added the name Jacob, which he chose from Micah 7:20, “You will show truth to Jacob, and grace to Abraham, as you have sworn to our ancestors since days of long ago.”
Interestingly, however, Rabbi Schwartzenberg expressed his desire to retain his beard and continue in his Jewish way of dressing as proof to other Jews that despite his faith in Yeshua he had not left his people.
“The Jews often think that persons are baptized in order to escape reproach, or to live in Christian quarters of the city, or to walk in the “Saxon Garden” (from which Polish Jews were then excluded), but I will show them that none of these things move me. I am a Jew still formerly I was an unbelieving Jew, but now I am a believing Jew, and, whatever inconvenience or reproach may result, I wish to bear it with my brethren.”
This confession caused great strife within the Jewish community, who had him summoned before the police – for he continued to live in the way he had until then, and wore the distinctive dress of an Orthodox Jew and continued to live and socialize among his own people.
He supported himself by selling fruit in the street and continuing to visit the Jewish quarters of the city, often discussing with others his understanding of who the Messiah is. The police had standing orders to protect him, but at times when he found himself alone in a street he was often pelted with stones and mud. He lived this way for the next fourteen years. He was a man of strong common sense; but humility, zeal, piety, kindness, and gratitude were always the striking features of his character, which made him loved to all who knew him.
When members of the Jewish community of Warsaw heard that the elderly rabbi was dying, they crowded his home and bedroom to witness whether or not the old saintly rabbi would recant his faith in Yeshua on his death-bed. He never did. Rather, his final words recorded before his death were:
“Brethren, you wish to know in what faith I am dying! If every drop of blood in me were vocal, endowed with speech, each such drop would cry aloud that I am dying full of joy and peace, believing in the redemption of Israel, through the Lord Yeshua the Messiah.”
Rabbi Abraham Jakob Schwartzenberg died on June 30, 1842 in Warsaw at the age of eighty years old.
HaGefen Publishing - Biographies - Rabbis who followed Yeshua - Schwartzenberg, Abraham Jacob
