Manny Brotman was the Founder and President of the Messianic Jewish Movement International (MJMI), originally incorporated as Shalom, Inc. on May 1, 1963. The ministry name was officially changed to the Messianic Jewish Movement International on December 5, 1971.
A native of Philadelphia, Manny was raised in a non-religious Jewish home. He attended Bible colleges in Nyack, NY and Canada, and graduated in Jewish Studies from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois.
Manny pioneered and popularized the use of Messianic terminology, planting Messianic congregations, Messianic Jewish television and radio, the pictorial Messianic Catalog, and Messianic evangelism and training materials such as “The Jewish Bible Approach,” “How to Share the Messiah,” and the tract “Have You Ever Heard of the Five Jewish Laws?”
Have You Ever Heard of the Five Jewish Laws?
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Manny was the first ordained Messianic Jewish Rabbi in the United States not affiliated with any church denomination. He also founded the Young Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (YMJA) in 1965, and was elected its first Executive Director and President. Manny participated in laying the groundwork for the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC) in the mid-1970s, and was subsequently elected its first president.
Manny was married to Audrey Yvonne Kitchen in 1957. They had two children, Joel and Nathan, and lived in Chicago, where MJMI was formed. Eventually settling in Maryland, Manny and Audrey worked together to build MJMI until Audrey’s untimely death in 1986.
In 1987, Manny married Messianic Jewish singer Sandra Sheskin, and together they continued the work of MJMI. For more than the last two years of his life, Manny sacrificed to make full use of MJMI’s global outreach in the battle for the legal rights of Messianic Believers in Israel to share their faith.
On July 4, 1999, Manny was in the middle of writing an MJMI newsletter entitled, “Jerusalem, The Most Important City in the World!” when he was felled by a massive brain hemorrhage. He died a few days later.
Manny is remembered as a pioneer, trailblazer and firebrand. According to Messianic Jewish Life! Magazine, “Manny was a warrior and a front-line soldier for the cause of Jewish outreach for 45 years. No one has been able to teach and explain Jewish evangelism like he did.”
