Crisis and Revival of the London Society’s Mission to the Jews

The London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews (LSPCJ) was the oldest and the biggest of the British Protestant organizations which carried out missions to the Jews. Founded in 1809, it reached Jewish communities on three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. One of the most important missionary destinations was Poland, with its vast Jewish population. From the very beginning, the missions of the Society provoked many discussions, both on the part of Jews and Christians. One of the issues was whether Jews (either as a people, or individuals) can be converted to Christianity. The answer which LSPCJ gave to this question in the first period of its missions, was enthusiastically positive.

The goal of this paper is to analyze how this question was approached in the later period – after a few decades of missionary activity which brought relatively few successes (if measured in the number of converts) and many disappointments. In the second half of the 19^th-century, LSPCJ underwent a crisis which pushed its committee to make some re-assessments and revisions. I wish to analyze what changed after this period in the Society’s approach to conversion of the Jews and what consequences these changes had on the missions (especially the missions conducted in Poland).