Daniel Nessim

Daniel Nessim is among the third generation of his family who are Jewish believers in Yeshua. His mother Judith (Singer) Nessim is a survivor of the Holocaust, having been spared by being hidden. Her father, who died shortly before the Holocaust began, in the midst of intense persecution of Jewish people in those days, was a believer in Yeshua from Vienna. His wife, Daniel’s maternal grandmother, remarried a German man by the name of Smith. With those credentials and many miracles, the little family survived, even living in Berlin during the Blitz.

Daniel’s father, Elie, was born in Kobe. His parents were business people from Baghdad and Cairo. As the Japanese grew increasingly militant, the family fled Japan for Cairo, and then fled Cairo for Bombay. It was there that Elie grew up. A few years after his arrival in England in the 1950’s, Elie became the first believer in Yeshua in his family. Subsequently, he led his older brother Albert to faith in Yeshua. Later, his younger sister Joy also accepted Yeshua as her Messiah.

Daniel has thus had a privilege rarely accorded to Jewish believers in Yeshua, having a heritage of faith in his own family. Daniel’s wife, Deborah, who was the first believer in her own family, has also seen remarkable work done by the Lord as her brother and sister are also now believers in Messiah.

Daniel is passionately committed to seeing other Jewish people come to know the Messiahship of Yeshua. Daniel believes that there is a great need to ‘put shoe leather’ on the fact that Jewish people can believe in Yeshua and still be Jews. Thus, he maintains his own Jewish lifestyle as a personal commitment of his faith and encourages other Jewish people to strengthen their commitment to their Jewish faith and community, empowered by the wonderful revelation that Messiah has come, and one day will reveal himself to the Jewish people as a whole.

In the past, Daniel has had the honour of serving as the Executive Director of Chosen People Ministries (UK), leader of Messianic Congregation Beit Sar Shalom in London, vice-president (and for a few months President) of the British Messianic Jewish Alliance.

Daniel is now an associate member of the Society of Biblical Literature, leads the Seattle branch of Chosen People Ministries, and is the leader of Kehillath Tsion, Vancouver’s first Messianic Jewish congregation. He is also working towards a Ph.D. at the University of Exeter.