Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Board of Foreign Missions. Missions to the Jews.

In 1846 the Board of Foreign Missions appointed the Rev. Matthew R. Miller (trained in Rabbinical literature and German) as its first missionary to the Jews, originally assigning him to Asia. These plans did not materialize, and Miller began a mission to the Jews in New York City in 1848. In 1849 he was joined by the Rev. John Neander, a former Rabbi. Also in 1849, the Rev. Bernard Steinthal was appointed to work among the Jews in Philadelphia, and in 1850, the Rev. Frederick I. Neuhaus among the Jews in Baltimore. In 1853, Mr. Julius Straus, a licentiate preacher, received a temporary appointment to New York. John Neander and Frederick Immanuel Neuhaus were missionaries for the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews before they came to the Board of Foreign Missions. The work eventually dwindled down in 1855 to one missionary, John Neander, who accepted a call to a German church in Brooklyn in 1858, and only gave part of his time to work among the Jews until 1876, when the Board discontinued its work in the Jewish field. In 1894, mission work to the Jews was assumed by the Board of Home Missions.