Vice President Mike Pence was blasted for welcoming a “leader in the Jewish community” who holds beliefs rejected by mainstream Judaism to mourn the 11 worshipers killed at a Pittsburgh synagogue, according to a report.
Pence, who calls himself a born-again evangelical Christian, invited “Messianic Rabbi” Loren Jacobs to the stage during a Monday campaign rally in Detroit for a Republican congressional candidate, the Associated Press reported.
Jacobs belongs to the congregation Shema Yisrael that practices Messianic Judaism and believes Jesus Christ is the coming messiah.
Many Jews consider the movement — also known as Jews for Jesus — to be a form of Christianity.
“I pray that you would comfort all those who are mourning because of those who were wounded and killed,” Jacobs said at the rally. “Lord, please work so that instead of division in our nation, there is unity and peace.”
He began by praying to the “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God of my Lord and Savior Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah, and my God and father too.”
Rabbi Jason Miller of Detroit called Jacobs’ appearance “pathetic.”
“There are over 60 rabbis in Michigan & yet the only rabbi the Michigan RNC could find to offer a prayer for the 11 Jewish victims in Pittsburgh at the Mike Pence rally was a local Jews for Jesus rabbi? That’s pathetic!,” Miller wrote on Twitter.
Rafael Shimunov, a board member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, said asking Jacobs to speak sent the wrong message.
“In response to antisemitic white nationalist attack, Vice President Mike Pence opens campaign event with a Christian Rabbi,” Shimunov wrote on Twitter.
Pence’s office in a statement said candidate Lena Epstein invited Jacobs and that it wasn’t “an endorsement of any particular faith.”
Robert Bowers, 46, was charged with barging into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill on Saturday, shouting anti-Semitic remarks, killing 11 people and wounding six.



