More About Us
Our heart’s desire is being fulfilled in front of our eyes! An intimate, Yeshua-centered, one-new-man community has already begun to be a light and testimony of God's power, love, and grace. We long to provoke the nation of Israel to the truth, to the redemptive power of Yeshua the Messiah. (read more below...)
I am Jewish and Israeli, born and raised in Israel. My family has been here in the land for more than a century. But growing up in secular Tel Aviv I felt lost, like many other young people I knew. I had a void, an emptiness inside me that I didn’t know how to fill. I was searching for God; I knew He existed. But I didn’t know how to approach Him: “Where is He?” I was on a spiritual search that took all my powers. All my strength. As I went through life, I went downhill more and more until I wanted to die.
Then I met Yeshua. While reading through the pages of the New Testament, I found answers to the questions that had troubled me since I was a teenager: “What is love and how do we love?” The words of Yeshua filled the void in my heart. I fell in love with Him, I had arrived home. I gave up my struggles, I was born again. Finally, I had found peace and rest.
The Lord led me to the Gateways Beyond discipleship community in Cyprus where I dedicated six months of my life to seeking Him and getting to know Him better while immersed in intense Yeshua-centered daily community life.
As a brand-new believer, those months in a missional community changed my life forever. I met the Lord in a very personal way. I learned how to live life as a believer with other people. I learned how to receive the love of God and to follow Yeshua.
At the community I met Valerie, my wife. After we completed our training, we got married, and prayed to seek God and understand where He wanted us. We felt very strongly that our calling was in Israel. We were burning with the desire to see other lost young people coming to the knowledge of God, giving their lives to Him, like we did. We wanted to give to others what we had received. We sensed God would use us in establishing communities in Israel where people could find shelter, rest, and a place to meet with God.
In 2003 we returned to Israel and joined Asher Intrater, whom we had met at the community in Cyprus when he came to teach. Asher invited us to join the Revive Israel ministry that he had established a few years before. We connected to Asher’s strong love of God and to his vision for salvation and revival in Israel – to bless the body of the Messiah in the Land, to give, teach, and make disciples.
With just a few families we began serving with Asher to build the Revive Israel Community and Discipleship Center. As a ministry and community, we started a small farm and a discipleship center between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We met together every day for teaching and worship, eating together, sharing life and doing the work of ministry. We were part of Asher’s team that planted Ahavat Yeshua (the love of Jesus) Congregation in Jerusalem where we served for some years.
More people joined. Our team grew, and we started traveling and teaching in many countries. Christians from the nations came to Israel to worship and pray with us during their visit to the land.
In 2009 we moved to Yad Hashmona, a messianic kibbutz in the beautiful hills west of Jerusalem. We rented an old carpentry, renovated it, and made it into a venue of prayer, worship and conferences – seeking the Kingdom of God and interceding for the people of Israel. We held various training programs. Students came and joined us for a season, had teachings, prayer and worship with us, experienced inner healing.
In 2018 the Lord led us to start a home-based community. Youval received in his heart to take a course in agriculture and did so. When the COVID pandemic came a year later we were ready. Everything in Israel closed down. Yet, during the quarantine God led us to develop a permaculture organic agriculture farm as a new platform for Israeli discipleship and evangelism, not far from our ministry base. We invited believers from all around Israel to come and work with us on the farm. That became our new Revive Israel discipleship center. As farmers working in agriculture, we were allowed to worship, pray and study the Bible together, while working the land as a community.
God is blessing greatly, and within the first two years of the farm we have already been able to lead seven discipleship sessions and double the area of the cultivated land. We are reaching out to the needy on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on a weekly basis and taking short mission trips with youth and young adults from Israel to the nations. Lost Israelis are being drawn in, saved and transformed!
In 2022, as the ministry grew and developed, Asher passed the reins of Revive Israel to us surrounded by a dynamic and dedicated community. We are excitedly and gratefully taking the vision to Revive Israel into its next generation expressions. Our prayer is that the Lord will use us to provide a home, a shelter, a place for the people of Israel to find Yeshua and get closer to Him. What a joy to cooperate in bringing the Kingdom of God to the heart of Israel.
