A Brother’s Vision, A Father’s Mission

Six years ago, The Fellowship lost its beloved founder, and Yael Eckstein lost her beloved father. The sudden passing of Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein on February 6, 2019, left a hole in the hearts of so many—his family, his friends, and the millions of lives touched by his lifework.

On this podcast, Yael celebrates her father’s extraordinary life with a special guest—Beryl Eckstein, her father’s younger brother. In this very personal and emotional episode, Beryl recalls growing up with Yechiel, walks us through the early, painful days when his brother was ostracized by the Jewish community for his work reaching out to Christians, and honors the lasting legacy of Rabbi Eckstein’s historic bridge-building work.

You won’t want to miss this inspiring tribute to a man whose vision literally changed the course of Jewish-Christian relations.

Episode Notes:

As Yael Eckstein says, few people knew her father, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, better than his younger brother, Beryl. Although years younger, Beryl Eckstein remained his brother’s closest ally and supporter during the difficult years as Yechiel built the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, turning it into what is today, the largest provider of humanitarian aid in Israel. It wasn’t an easy path…

The two brothers and their two sisters grew up in the home of Belle and Simon Eckstein, who was the chief rabbi of Ottawa, Canada. It was a household filled with faith and song and a deep love and connection to Israel, where the family has roots going back to the 1800s.

As children, Beryl recalls that they saw their father as the rabbi of a large congregation dealing with people’s lives, their problems, and their pain. “It was always the rabbi that shouldered that pain, and it is something that I think we all learned from. My brother gravitated to it; I gravitated away from it,” Beryl said. “But we learned how to speak to people and how to feel people’s pain. We learned to understand people and how to lead.”

While both brothers attended Yeshiva University in New York City, Yechiel chose to follow his father to the pulpit. But Yechiel’s path as an ordained rabbi was far from traditional. And when he began to reach out to Christians, seeing them as a source of support for the Jewish people and Israel, many in the Jewish community did not understand.

“Yechiel had a vision, a dream. He believed he was on a mission, a goal, and he wasn’t going to let anything else ruffle his feathers,” Beryl remembers. And when Jewish leaders disagreed with Yechiel’s work, Beryl said it hurt his brother deeply.

Years later, as The Fellowship began to make its mark in Jewish-Christian relations and providing humanitarian aid, the tide began to turn. “All those people who had criticized him, all those people came around,” Beryl said. “They became his supporters in everything they did.”

And that, Beryl says, is his brother’s legacy: “He changed history. He was the first to reach out to the evangelical community, and he was the only one for many, many years. The fact that the Embassy of the United States is in Jerusalem—it all came from a base of Yechiel Eckstein.”