Wolkenberg, Rev. Marcus. Mordecai Wolkenberg (for such was his Jewish name) was born in 1834 in Russian Poland. When quite young he was smuggled over the border into Galicia (Austrian Poland) to avoid being Christianized and trained for military service, it often being the custom in the time of the Emperor Nicholas I. to seize Jewish lads for those ends. Mordecai was placed by his parents with pious and orthodox relatives at Brody, where he gained the interest of the famous rabbi of the town, Salomon Kluger, and through his teaching soon acquired a good Hebrew and Talmudical education. When quite a young man he was appointed tutor in the home of the rich banker Cahner at Jassy, where he remained about two years. During his stay there he made the acquaintance of the Rev. W. Mayer, the L.J.S. missionary. After a time of great heart-searching and deep spiritual experience, he was led to embrace the Christian faith, and was baptized. Thereupon he had to pass through a period of bitter trial and persecution, instigated chiefly by his employer. His occupation had brought him in contact with many people. All these forsook him when he made his public confession of Christianity. At length he had to leave Jassy, and, after a while, Marcus (as his name now was) went to the Malta Protestant College; later on he came to London, when he read theology with the Rev. A. S. Thelwall. In 1863 he was appointed an assistant missionary at Jassy. This was a great trial to his feelings and faith, for it was there that he first found Christ, and there, in consequence, that he had first tasted the venom of religious hatred. Here, however, to his surprise, he was sought for and visited by numbers of his former acquaintances. A wide door, and effectual, was thus opened to him, one result of years of patient school and other missionary work by those who had long laboured in Jassy. Of this circumstance he says: "Most of these visitors were teachers, some merchants, and others near relatives of one of the wealthiest Jews here. Nor has the bold proclamation of the truth, on my part, deterred them from continuing their intercourse with me." For seven years he thus worked in Jassy and in Bacau for Christ, and with much blessing. In 1870, owing to the illness of his wife, he had to return to England; where he laboured successively in London, Manchester, Birmingham, and lastly in Liverpool, where he died April 17th, 1900, very much regretted by all who knew him, and not least by many Jews, who spoke in the highest terms of his goodness, piety, and scholarship.
Xeres, Jonah ben Jacob, was a native of North Africa, where he came in contact with English Christian merchants and learned the truth as it is in Jesus from them. In 1707 he came to London and was instructed and baptized by Dr. Allix in 1709. He then wrote an "Address to the Jews," containing his reasons for leaving the Jewish and embracing the Christian religion. (See Wolff Bib. Heb., 14, N. 823.)
The book is dedicated to the then Archbishop of York (in 1709), and prefaced by an attestation to the respectability of the author by seven London merchants, and another by the learned Dr. Allix.
"We, whose names are underwritten, merchants trading into Barbary in Africa, do hereby certify, all whom it may concern, that we, each of us, having formerly lived for several years in those parts, did then, as we do now, personally know Jonah ben Jacob Xeres, who was born in Saphia, a sea-port town on that coast. His parents, being Hebrews, were reputed to be honest and substantial people; who employed much care in educating this their son, Jonah, in the Jewish religion, and no less expense in instructing him in the Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldean tongues. He the said Jonah lived in that country a professed Jew, till the age of five and twenty, or thereabouts; and always behaved himself sober in his conversation, and no less just in his dealing, as some of us have experienced, having had occasion to employ him on several accounts, whereby, amongst other conversation, he had an opportunity of discoursing with some in our factory about matters of religion; and, as he now informs us, was thereby possessed with some notion, that the Messiah had already come; whereby, being uneasy under such a weighty doubt, he came over to England about eighteen months ago, in order to acquire a full satisfaction. After some time here, he applied himself to some of us to recommend him to some learned Divine for information; whereupon he was sent to the Rev. Dr. Allix, on whom some of us have since waited, who, requesting of us a character of the said Jonah, is the occasion of this paper, which we do in all respects believe to be true, and have a very good opinion of the probity and sincerity of the above-mentioned Jonah; and that we trust upon his examination, he will prove to the judgment of the Most Reverend the Archbishops, the Right Reverend the Bishops, the Reverend the Clergy, and all other pious Christians, to whom we recommend him, &c.
"Done at London, this eight and twentieth day of May, one thousand seven hundred and nine.
"Peter Fleuriot, Samuel Robinson, John Lodington, John Adams, Val. Norton, Robert Colmore, Thomas Coleman."
"These are to certify, that upon several discourses had with the aforementioned Jonah ben Jacob Xeres, I have found him very well acquainted with the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, and all other Jewish and particularly Talmudical learning; so that he was very ready, upon the chief objections that Jews make to the doctrine, deity, and office of our Saviour. But, as he is endowed with very good natural and acquired parts, I was the more able to satisfy and convince him of the truth; so that, after having examined by Scripture all the most material controversies, he hath freely declared to myself, and his other friends, his desire to renounce the errors and prejudices of his education in the Jewish religion, and to embrace and profess the Christian faith.
"Witness my hand this 30th day of July, 1709.
"Peter Allix, D.D."
Zabanski, J., was born at Minsk in Lithuania. His father, a bigoted Talmudist, sent him once on an errand to a Christian nobleman, who made him a present of a Hebrew New Testament which, on coming home, he innocently enough shewed his father, and was peremptorily told to take it back. This excited in him the curiosity to know the contents of the book, and he soon procured one. Detected in reading it, he was punished by his father more than once, and at last the father got the police to give him twenty-five strokes with a rod for disobedience. The consequence was that he got ill and had to be taken to a hospital. After being there nine weeks, he ran away, obtained a situation as a teacher in a family for three years, where he got possession of a German New Testament and Dr. McCaul's "Old Paths." He then returned to his father and asked his permission to go abroad. As this was not granted, he again ran away, and this time to Constantinople, where he heard the Gospel from a missionary named Goldberg. Thence he went to Jerusalem, and was admitted by Hershon into the House of Industry. His countrymen there, who knew his father as a learned Talmudist, tried every means to snatch him away from the Mission. They even went to Rachel's grave to pray for his return to Judaism, and finally sent two Jews to his father to come and fetch him, but Zabanski became a Christian and laboured afterwards as a missionary of the L.J.S. from 1864 to 1867, and for a long period as an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, in Bulgaria.