Arnold Fruchtenbaum was born in 1943 in Siberia, Russia after his Jewish father — falsely accused of being a Nazi spy when he fled Poland from Hitler — was released from a Communist prison. With the help of the Israeli underground in 1947, the Fruchtenbaum family escaped from behind the Iron Curtain to Germany, where they were confined to British Displaced Persons' camps. There, Arnold received Orthodox Jewish training from his father before the family finally immigrated to New York in 1951. Before their release, however, the family was befriended by a Lutheran minister; and it was this contact that eventually led Arnold and his mother to the New York headquarters of the American Board of Missions to the Jews (ABMJ). Five years later, this same meeting brought Arnold, at age 13, to saving knowledge of Jesus the Messiah.
He has traveled widely in Europe, Israel and the United States, becoming intimately acquainted with the messianic movement in all its forms and struggles. The completion of his dissertation, Israelology: The Missing Link in Systematic Theology, was the culmination of 13 years of research for which he earned his Ph.D. at New York University in 1989. Dr. Fruchtenbaum has authored numerous published works and recorded many Biblical studies of keen interest to both Jews and Gentiles.
