Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast

The Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast (JPB) is a prayer movement initiated and led by Knesset member Robert Ilatov, with Albert Veksler as director and co-founder. Each year, the JPB brings together influential Christian leaders from around the world with representatives from Israel’s government and the Knesset.

The Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast takes place May 27-29 in the Knesset in Jerusalem. Around 400 delegates attended the Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast Stockholm last April. Photo: Ruben Agnarsson

In addition to the Knesset, prayer breakfasts have also been organised in nearly 20 locations, including London, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, New York, Dallas, Tallinn, and Rome.
– “We gather Christians from all over the world who love Israel, in the Knesset, to pray for peace over Jerusalem.”
Jews and Christians have a complicated two-thousand-year history, to say the least, but in recent years we have seen the most unexpected things happen, explains Albert Veksler, director and co-founder.
– “At the Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast, we see Jews, rabbis, Christians, and pastors coming together, praying together, and feeling comfortable doing so,” he continues.
– “Looking back just over 100 years, one can see that when these barriers are removed, history is made. One example is the support of the Anglican pastor William Hechler for Theodor Herzl.”
– “These two men, the Jewish Herzl and the Christian Hechler, achieved the most remarkable things together, such as the First Zionist Congress, where Christian Zionists gave their support to the Jewish return to the Holy Land.”

Albert Veksler describes how, in the late 19th century, Hechler used his social connections to introduce Herzl to members of the German royal family and to the Sultan of Turkey, helping to elevate Herzl’s concept of a Jewish national homeland from the political fringe to a topic of discussion among world leaders.
– “This created the conditions for the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate,” he emphasises, also mentioning President Truman, who had a Jewish friend he worked and did business with.
– “Because of this friendship, Truman — against all odds and without the support of the State Department — was able to recognise Israel just eleven minutes after Ben Gurion declared the State of Israel. When Jews and Christians come together, miracles happen,” says Albert Veksler.
– “This is what the Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast is all about. We see miraculous things happen. We have two co-organisers from the Knesset — one from the coalition and one from the opposition — when we invite Christian friends to the Knesset.
– “Intercession for Israel in the Knesset are events that are impossible to plan, but they happen.”

Albert Veksler mentions the prayer breakfast in the Netherlands at the end of June 2019 as an example. Jewish rabbis, Christian pastors, and the Dutch government were represented when the national organiser read from Isaiah 42:22: “But this is a people plundered and looted… They have been given over to plunder, with no one to rescue them, to spoil, with no one to say, ‘Give it back.’”
– “That same day, the Dutch state railway company decided to pay tens of millions of euros in compensation to Holocaust victims and their families,” says Albert Veksler.
The company had made millions in today’s money by transporting Jewish families to the Nazi transit camp Westerbork, from where they were deported — primarily to the death camps in Auschwitz and Sobibor.
Six months later, Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologised for his country’s failure to save Jews from the Holocaust. The apology was followed a few months later by King Willem-Alexander, and thereafter by the Protestant Church of the Netherlands.
– “The King acknowledged his great-grandmother, Queen Wilhelmina’s indifference to the fate of Dutch Jews during the Holocaust,” says Albert Veksler, who last April organised the Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast in Stockholm at the Elite Hotel Marina Tower in Nacka, where around 400 delegates gathered.