Arnold Genekowitsch Fruchtenbaum (born September 26, 1943) is a Russian-born American theologian. He is a leading expert in Messianic Judaic theology and the founder and director of Ariel Ministries, an organization which prioritizes the evangelization of Jews in an effort to bring them to the view that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. He lectures and travels widely. Fruchtenbaum was born on September 26, 1943 in Tobolsk, Tyumen Oblast, Siberia, Russian SFSR to Henry (a photographer) and Adele (Suppes) Fruchtenbaum. Fruchtenbaum's ancestors were leaders in a Hasidic group in Poland. His grandfather was known to have the whole Tanakh memorized in Hebrew by age 18 and had been the one to call the final edict on the debate ruling the consumption of tomatoes as kosher for their community in Poland. After the Nazi invasion of Poland, the Fruchtenbaum family had fled to the Soviet Union, where Fruchtenbaum's father was falsely accused of being a Nazi Spy. Before Fruchtenbaum was born, his Jewish father was released from a communist prison in Siberia. After World War II, the family returned to Poland and lived in the Jewish ghetto where Fruchtenbaum had his first encounter with the name of Jesus during an encounter with a mob. In 1947, by means of the Israeli underground who bribed border guards, the family escaped to Czechoslovakia. But then a year later, after the communists seized power in Czechoslovakia, the family posed as Greeks and escaped from behind the Iron Curtain to West Germany. There, the Fruchtenbaums were kept in British Displaced Persons' Camps where Henry Fruchtenbaum taught his son the traditions of Orthodox Judaism and where their family came in contact with a Lutheran minister and his daughter who visited the camp to bring food and clothing. This minister would eventually connect Fruchtenbaum and his mother with the American Board of Missions to the Jews (ABMJ; today, Chosen People Ministries) in New York and greatly influence Fruchtenbaum becoming a Messianic Jew. Fruchtenbaum and the family then moved to New York in 1951 where they lived in a Jewish section of Brooklyn. At age 13, Fruchtenbaum came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah after attending Hebrew-Christian meetings with Chosen People Ministries. But his father opposed Fruchtenbaum's faith and forbade him to read the Bible, attend meetings, or otherwise meet with Messianic Jews. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1958. More information...
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