The Center for Israel and Jewish Studies

Promoting the academic study of Israel and the Jewish people, Messianic Judaism, and Jewish-Christian relations.

Overview of the Center

The Center for Israel and Jewish Studies showcases TKU’s academic offerings in three fields of study—Antisemitism and Jewish Advocacy, Messianic Judaism, and Land of the Bible. It promotes experiences that enrich TKU students, such as our annual Israel Study Trip, visits to the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, guest lecturers with Gateway Center for Israel, and film nights that focus on Jewish history, world Jewry, and Jewish-Christian Relations. 

The Center has three primary areas of emphasis: awareness, advocacy, and education.

Awareness

We help students to become more aware of the Jewish roots of the Christian faith, what God is doing today in forming his One New Man made up of Jews and Gentiles in Messiah, and how Christians and Messianic Jews can be a blessing to Israel and the Jewish people.

Advocacy

We challenge students to advocate for the well-being of the Jewish people, engage antisemitism in the church and public square, to promote Jewish-Christian relations, and contribute to healing the schism between the Church and the Jewish people.

Education

We train rabbis, teachers, and chaplains in the Messianic Jewish community, and Christian leaders who are called to be bridges between the Church and the Jewish people, through undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral studies.

Passover Points To Jesus

Some of my earliest family memories happened during the Passover Seder meal at my grandparents’ home. The Seder meal marks the beginning of the eight-day holiday. I can remember playing on the floor next to the dinner table while everyone else was still sitting at the table, and my grandmother would say, “Twenty years are like nothing.” I marveled when she said that. Today, I’m amazed that Passover not only reminds me of those childhood memories—it reminds us of things that happened 3,500 years ago. READ MORE

Is There Antisemitism in Your Thoeology?

“Their rotten and unbending stiff-neckedness deserves that they be oppressed unendingly and without measure or end and that they die in their misery without the pity of anyone.”
Can you imagine a pastor saying this from their platform today? What if one of the modern leaders of the Christian community wrote a book and said this? Worse yet, what if a sentiment like this informed the theologies of a majority of Christians for centuries? READ MORE

Center Director:
Dr. David Rudolph
david.rudolph@tku.edu
(817) 722-1795