"Whilst in London the Committee of the Malta Protestant College, to whom I was well known, and amongst whom were the late Lords Shaftesbury, Calthorpe and Kinnaird, engaged me, and I went to the East to establish British Schools for boys in all the principal towns bordering on the Mediterranean and Black Seas. I established in Cairo a large boarding and day school, and for over two years I worked on until my health completely broke down, and, acting upon medical advice, I resigned and came to London.
"On August 21st, 1865, I was engaged by the Committee of the British Society, and ever since then I have been labouring, in Adrianople, chiefly among the Jews, but also among the Armenians and the Greeks. During the first ten years I baptized forty Jews, whilst other enquirers of mine have been baptized in Constantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem and London. Many unbaptized Jews, Armenians and Greeks, have also been led to believe in Jesus as the Saviour of their souls." He died in 1905 after more than forty years missionary work in Adrianople.
Rosenberg, Samuel, M.D., was baptized at Constantinople about 1873. He accompanied General Hicks on his compaign in the Soudan, where he lost his life with the rest of the expedition.
Rosenbohm, a Jewish convert in Sweden, was tutor of Hebrew at the University of Upsala, in 1720. At the Coronation of King Friedrich, he delivered a rabbinic oration, and likewise at the conclusion of peace between the Kings of England, Denmark, and Prussia. (Wolff Bib. Heb. 3 N, 2138 a).
Rosenfeld, J. F. (Asriel), was born in 1807. His parents brought him up piously, and married him at the age of fourteen. Coming in contact in Berditsheff with a Scotchman, he received from him a New Testament. He then went to Warsaw, became an inmate in the House of Industry, and learned the trade of bookbinding, was baptized in 1828, and afterwards laboured zealously as a missionary in Poland until his death in 1853.
Rosenstrauch, Max, was born at Lemberg, on September 1, 1837. His parents Moses and Scheindell, were strictly orthodox, and brought him up in the straitest customs of strict Judaism. As he grew up, they were proud of his Talmudical knowledge, their intention being that he should become a rabbi. When seventeen years old, family circumstances compelled him, however, to go into business, and he was apprenticed to a merchant, with whom he remained ten years. In 1865, he accepted the post of a schoolmaster in Jassy. Whilst there he heard of the Hebrew learning of the Rev. W. Mayer, one of the L.J.S. missionaries, and formerly a scholar in their mission schools in London. From him he received a New Testament, which he read with eagerness, leading him to take Christian instruction for eighteen months. Soon after this a strange event took place in his life. He had left Jassy, and was on a steamer going to Odessa, when the engine broke down. There being danger, the Captain called upon all the passengers to pray. This Max Rosenstrauch felt he could not do in the Name of Jesus Christ; all he could say was—"Lord, teach us to pray." Later on the captain gave an earnest address to the passengers on St. John iii. 14, 15; this he did not fully understand, but what he did made a lasting impression upon him. In 1867 he was in Kischineff, and of this period he says, "It only awakens in me painful reminiscences. My Talmudical supports had been broken by the instruction received at Jassy, and I fell altogether into unbelief. I could perform neither Jewish nor Christian prayers. I did not even believe in the existence of God. I sometimes disputed with the Scotch missionary, Mr. Tomory, and Mr. Daniel Landsmann, and they knew me as a thorough infidel Jew. At Odessa I lived as an atheist, and I had no intercourse with any Christian. I was busy the whole day at a boarding-school, under Mr. Trübitsch. At Kischineff my slumbering conscience was aroused, and an unspeakable struggle agitated my heart, until the Lord opened my eyes, and in every page of the Bible I saw the glory of Him who said, 'I am the Light of the World.' In His Name I was baptized on Easter Day, 1868." After some years of missionary work with continental societies, he joined the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, in which he remained till his death, November 3, 1900. The "Prayer-book for Jewesses" and his "Catechism for Jews," which he wrote, have been most useful in his work, and in that of the above Society generally.
Rosenthal, Rev. Michael, Vicar of St. Mark's, Whitechapel, who died at the age of 63, was a converted Jewish rabbi, who for thirty years carried on an earnest missionary work among the Jews of East London. The story of his conversion is a remarkable one. Young rabbi Rosenthal, a Hebrew of German extraction, was a profound Talmudist, and as strict and zealous a Jew as was Saul of Tarsus before the journey to Damascus. Rosenthal was sent on missions in connexion with the faith of his fathers to Asia Minor, to North Africa and other countries, and finally to England. On a steamboat he met a very learned and able man, who he believed was a Jesuit. The man was certainly a Roman Catholic, and he possessed a good deal of rabbinical lore. Rosenthal, as a strict Jew, observed all the dietary and other laws of his people, and took his meals separately. The supposed Jesuit ridiculed his scruples, and one day, when the young rabbi was dining alone, touched his bottle of claret, thereby, of course, rendering it defiled. Rosenthal was angry, and the man saw this and taxed him with over-niceness in ceremonial observance. "Do you really think," he asked, "that God is pleased by your rejecting things that are good enough for the captain and other people on the ship, and that you really serve Him by making yourself so different from anybody else?" They had some conversation, which left a great impression on the young rabbi's mind. One argument used by the supposed priest had considerable effect. The Jews in the course of their history during the last nineteen hundred years have acknowledged no fewer than twenty-four Messiahs, all of whom have turned out to be false, either impostors or self-deluded fanatics. Can a nation that has made the gigantic mistake of accepting twenty-four false Messiahs claim to be infallible in rejecting a twenty-fifth? All these false Messiahs have appeared and been accepted since our Lord lived on earth except "Judas of Galilee," who was a contemporary of Jesus Christ. Some time after his arrival in England Rosenthal became acquainted with Dr. Wilkinson, then rector of St. Peter's, Eaton Square. The young rabbi was tremendously impressed by Dr. Wilkinson's great abilities and spiritual earnestness. "Here is a Christian," he said to himself, "who is absolutely sincere and of great intellectual power. Can Christianity be merely a modern form of Paganism when such noble souls as these profess it?" He listened to Dr. Wilkinson, and was on the way to conversion when the good rector advised him to have recourse to the learned Dr. Ewald, a celebrated Jewish missionary of the L.J.S., for the solution of difficulties which only a Hebraist could deal with successfully. Rosenthal was eventually baptized by Ewald. He took orders in the English Church, being ordained deacon by Dr. Jackson, Bishop of London, in 1877. Four years later he was admitted to the priesthood, and he served for thirteen years as curate to the Rev. S. J. Stone, author of "The Church's One Foundation," at St. Paul's, Haggerston, devoting himself chiefly to mission work among the East-end Jews. He organized the East London Mission to the Jews, which first came under regular diocesan management when the present Bishop of London was Bishop of Stepney. In 1899 Bishop Creighton presented Mr. Rosenthal to St. Mark's, Whitechapel, a parish which is inhabited almost entirely by Jews. He met with a good deal of hostility from the Jews in the first years, but he talked straight to them and gradually the opposition died down, and he steadily pursued his mission work among them. His labours were attended with considerable success. He said that he had himself baptized over six hundred Jews and Jewesses.
Rosenthal, Wildan Charles (Simeon), a learned Jew in Jerusalem, was baptized with his wife, son and daughter by Nicolayson in 1839. This family were the firstfruits of the L.J.S. mission in the Holy City. His daughter became the wife of Mr. Bergheim, the banker, a Jewish convert.
Rossvally, Dr. Max L., an American Jewish convert in the latter half of the nineteenth century. He had been an actor, and after his conversion became well-known as a lecturer in America and in England. He displayed great zeal in his endeavours to form a Hebrew Christian Union, and in 1877 it is recorded that two hundred converts were united together and held monthly meetings in New York and in Brooklyn. Rossvally wrote "The Dying Trumpeter and his Experience," a German version of which appeared in Hamburg, in 1891.
Ruben, Maurice, was born in Prussia, in 1856. His people were typical Jews, strict in their customs and in the observance of Jewish laws and traditions. He came to the United States when he was sixteen years of age. In 1895 he had the position of department manager in one of Pittsburg's largest stores. His brother was half owner of this enterprise. Plans were under way to admit him into a partnership in the firm, which would have made him to-day—had he chosen "the way of the world"—a man of wealth, with an annual income of 15,000 dollars.