Founder’s Blog

A Welcome Gift

First Fruits of Zion has come to a milestone this past year by reaching our 20^th year in service to you, to the Messianic Jewish movement, and most importantly, to the Master Yeshua.

This milestone forced us to reflect upon our history and to consider the future. As we looked back we analyzed areas in which we can do better in the future. Over the next few months, in celebration of this year of importance, I will continue to share with you where we’ve been and where we hope to go. One area  where we have always had a great need has been replication of our materials into other languages, and especially into Spanish.

We’ve had numerous people approach us over the years about this need and volunteer their services, offering to translate our books. But translation is a tricky discipline. Translating words is different than translating context and concepts. Finding a translator that can fit into our culture, that shares our values, and that has the technical skills to properly translate, has been a chore.

So we’ve waited and we received a welcomed gift.

Meet Yisrael Levitt. 

I first met Yisrael in a Messianic Jewish congregation in Los Angeles. I was invited to speak there that Shabbat and he conducted the afternoon Torah discussion. I was instantly impressed with him, his knowledge, his passion, and his dedication. As I learned his story I grew more and more impressed. I learned of the sacrifices he has made for the sake of Yeshua. I immediately saw great talent and had hoped to develop a relationship with him to learn about his character to see if he might become an individual that could do some teaching for First Fruits of Zion. Little did I know, Yisrael felt the same. He states,

Over the next few years, I interacted with Boaz, met the rest of the teaching staff, and became a "groupie", of sorts, as I promoted their organization and teaching tools to anyone who would listen. It isn't simply that FFOZ has first-rate materials, produced in an attractive and engaging manner. Those features, coupled with the humility, dedication, and focus that are trademarks of their ministry, make this organization, in my estimation, as one who has been involved in the movement since 1998, one of the premier Messianic ministries in the movement today. Realizing that we are like-minded in both our ideological and theological views, Boaz started to open up a few projects here and there for me to work on in conjunction with the FFOZ team.

We’ve worked with Yisrael on several projects—particularly with some of our translation work. Yisrael is proficient in Hebrew and very familiar with many of the texts we are developing for Vine of David. It has been a blessing to have him working for us. He’s written for our journal, and is one of the editors on our new translation of Paul Levertoff’s work, Religious Ideas of the Chasidim.

When I found out that Yisrael is a California state certified Spanish-English interpreter and translator, I jumped inside. I thought that, perhaps this is who we were waiting for—someone who can come alongside our existing team and replicate our resources in Spanish to reach many more people with our message.

Yisrael, it turns out, is truly "un regalo bien recibido," or in English, “A Welcome Gift.”

For now, we are going to utilize Yisrael to one of the areas of our biggest needs. He will be starting to translate our HaYesod program into Spanish and then some of our key books and programs.

But, honestly, I think Yisrael will feel a bit limited in this area of specialty. He mostly has a heart to defend the nature and character of Messiah to his Jewish people and to encourage Yeshua-believing Jews to live Jewish lives in devotion to the Torah and Messiah. He has paid the heavy, personal price of being excised from the Jewish community for his faith, staying strong for Messiah, and remaining devoted to strengthening Messianic Judaism. So knowing Yisrael and knowing us we will lean on him in these areas as well.

You can expect over the next couple of months and from this point forward to start seeing some of our materials come out in Spanish as well. Yisrael will be key to this endeavor and we are welcoming him onto our teaching team here at FFOZ. Please welcome him with us, and I pray his efforts will be a blessing to you and many others.

About the Author: Boaz Michael is the President and Founder of First Fruits of Zion.

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