Yechiel Eckstein, an American-born rabbi who did much to foster Jewish cooperation with evangelical Christians, died in Jerusalem last week at the age of sixty-seven. In 1991, his outreach to Christian groups led him to create the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which remains one of Israel’s largest charities and has raised millions of dollars for needy Jews. While much of Eckstein’s public activities focused on Israel, he came to the idea of a Jewish-evangelical alliance when confronting American anti-Semitism, as Jonathan Tobin writes:

On December 20, a Palestinian waited in a wooded area near a Jewish village in northern Israel in the hope of encountering a victim. Soon enough he spotted Esther Horgan walking home from an evening jog and killed her by beating her with a rock. He later told the police that he did the deed to avenge the death of Kamal Abu Wa’er, a terrorist in Israeli custody. Itamar Marcus explains: