An exposé of the Christian missionary family in Jerusalem, Michael and Amanda Elk and their five children, was published last week by The Jewish Chronicle (JC).

The JC carried out an investigation in Jerusalem and in Michael’s hometown of Penns Grove, New Jersey and discovered that Michael was born to a Methodist mother and Protestant father, was heavily involved with evangelical churches in the US, and had thousands of dollars of unpaid debts in the US.

A reporter spoke to Michael’s mother, Patricia Baric, 69, in Penns Grove, who said she hasn’t had any contact with her son for 15 years in the wake of an argument about his late father’s estate. However, she confirmed that neither she nor Michael’s father were Jewish.

“I’m a Methodist,” she said. “We weren’t really a religious family when Michael was young. I grew up in the church but didn’t go. Michael’s father was not observant as a Mennonite (Protestant).”

Mrs. Baric said that her son’s spiritual quest began when he was a teenager and his father got sick. At that time, his parents had divorced and he was living with his father.

“Religion entered his life when his father was really sick, and his father decided maybe it’s time he saw the light,” Mrs. Baric, who is now married to her third husband, said. “He was baptized around the age of 17. His father was still alive at that point. I think it was a church in Pennsville, a non-denominational church. He didn’t seek religion until he was in his late teens, so maybe he was just searching. I don’t know.”

“He knew the Bible. He definitely knew the Bible because when he was living with me, the minister at the Presbyterian church I was going to had him preach sometimes, when he wasn’t there. He knew the Bible.”

In 1997, when Michael was 18, he enrolled at Eastern University, a four-year private Christian college in St Davids, Pennsylvania. “He went there to study biological science but he wasn’t getting it, so he switched [to Bible studies],” his mother said, adding that he was eventually certified as a Christian clergyman “through the internet, not through a seminary.”

Mrs. Baric disapproves of the deceitful actions of her son. “That’s not the way he was brought up,” she said. “I just thought his values, morals would be a lot different.”

She continued that when Michael was in his last year of college, he was attending a “Messianic synagogue” (for Jews who follow Jesus) called Beth Yeshua, in Overbrook, Pennsylvania as well as an evangelical church. At that point, he dressed like an Orthodox Jew, wearing white shirts, black pants, and a yarmulke.

In 2001, Michale got married to his first wife, Crystal Tracy, whom he met at Eastern University, in a ceremony with a chuppah. Tracy, now 42, told JC that Michael, who identified as a Jew when they met, was very manipulative.

“I should preface this by saying that I now realize that he was very manipulative, and I made some choices that weren’t the best because of his involvement,” she said. “I tended to believe anything he told me.”

“Michael swore his parents were both Jewish and went to synagogue when he was a kid. He always said he was Jewish, but he was a Christian. We got engaged in sophomore year and we were going to the synagogue and the church, and he wanted to get more in touch with his Jewish roots.”

After the two were engaged, Michael began frequenting the local Chabad center, bringing Tracy with him. “It was awkward because I wasn’t Jewish, and the people at the synagogue didn’t know we were engaged,” she said.

However, Michael managed to persuade Tracy that she had Jewish ancestry, according to genealogical research he performed online.

“I’m Pennsylvania Dutch,” Tracy said. “It’s a very homogeneous, non-Jewish community. It is very not Jewish. He found two resources that said a Jewish woman had married in and converted, and I would be Jewish. I believed everything he told me then. He was very good at creating a convincing paper trail and making it seem like, hey, you’re Jewish now, we can get married. He’s extremely manipulative. He’s a gaslighter.”

“We were both living (as Jews) at that point: mikveh, head covering, completely separate meat and milk, kosher. He was very devout in his observance, but he was not a very honest person. Through a rabbi, he got a job at a kosher section of a Safeway. While working there, there were questions about his time clock, and he was fired.”

Their marriage only lasted three years. “He used the Bible to convince me I should stay with him, the first time I broke up with him,” Tracy said. “When he got fired, it snapped me out of it. That’s when I was realizing an Orthodox life isn’t sustainable for me. I told him I didn’t want to be Orthodox anymore, so he accused me of cheating on him.”

Tracy added that Michael had become involved with an evangelical church called MorningStar Ministries in South Carolina, which sends missionaries on “covert missions” overseas.

“He carried on with MorningStar after the divorce,” she said. “They are very much about converting the Jews to bring on the end times. I heard this all the time.”

In 2003, Michael earned “semicha” through an online course by Yeshivas Chonen Daas in Ramat Beit Shemesh.

After Tracy and Michael divorced in 2004, he married his second wife, Amanda Core, also a non-Jewess, who grew up on an X-mas tree farm. They moved to Israel a year later.

According to the JC report, Michael proved his Jewishness when he made aliyah via his semicha, which has since been revoked, and his get from his first marriage, which was granted without confirmation of his Jewishness.

As is now well-known, the couple had five children and settled into frum comminutes in Jerusalem, first Nachlaot and then French Hill, where they lived for the past seven years.

Amanda Bradley, a frum friend of the family, told JC: “They never had much money. She was raising money both here amongst her Jewish friends to help pay for them to be able to go back and visit her family, but also amongst her Christian community.”

The family put on an excellent act because if anyone really wanted to, they could have uncovered the couple’s true identities. Michael wrote a book in 2008 called The Triumph of Justice about Messianic Judaism and also wrote a blog about being a covert missionary. Amanda had two Facebook pages, a Jewish one and a Christian one. And as is also well-known now, in 2011, Michael, dressed as a “frum Rabbi” appeared on MorningStar Ministries TV.

In 2012, Michael founded a religious seminary called Yeshivat Yarim Ha’am, where he taught around 10 students about Jesus and a “Jewish” version of Christianity, ordaining other “rabbis” to continue spreading “the word” among frum Jews in Israel, according to Shannon Nuszen of the anti-missionary Beyneynu organization.

In 2014, when the family was still living in Nachlaot, Michael’s Christian activities were uncovered by the anti-missionary group Lev L’Achim and he was kicked out of the kabbalah yeshivah he was learning at.

When confronted by the organization, Michael confessed but promised he had “repented” and that he and his wife had been convinced by the beauty of a frum life and truly wanted to live as Jews. JC obtained a transcript of the confession, in which Michael said he was paid up $500 per month by Morningstar Ministries. Apparently, the organization was unaware that the couple was not actually Jewish.

Michael then relocated his family to French Hill and after two years, his wife was diagnosed with cancer. The end of the family’s sojourn in French Hill is now known.

The anti-missionary organizations are now trying to uncover Michael’s students and colleagues, who are settled in other frum communities in Israel. According to Beyneynu, three covert Christian families are to be imminently revealed.

Michael wasn’t content to be a “plain Jew” and professed to be a rabbi, a sofer, a mohel, and a Kohen. He also claimed to be a descendant of a chashuv Moroccan family descended from the Ari and related to the Baba Sali.

The mother of a boy whose bris was performed by Michael told the JC: “I feel like someone punched me.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)