Synagogue of shame: The converts being coerced and exploited by the British ‘rabbi’ who follows Jesus

“Rabbi Binyamin” offers the full service: conversions, brit milahs, bar mitzvahs, weddings, burials – even a paid rabbinic internship. While he appears sincere in his belief that he offers an authentic – if not “mainstream” – form of Judaism, no mainstream Jewish bodies accept messianism as Jewish, a fact he claims to make clear to prospective converts. However, it is easy to see how those unfamiliar with messianic congregations could be deceived into believing they are joining a typical Jewish congregation.

Sarah Harvey, a senior researcher at the Information Network on Religious Movements (Inform) at King’s College London, said that Sheldrake appeared to be a typical “charismatic leader” overseeing a “culture of control”.

This, she said, included “isolating people from their extended family and creating an ‘us and them’ dynamic between the individual and their wider family and community”.

She added: “Leaders create a sense that they are protecting the purity of their community, which means it becomes very insular and leaders are not subject to dissenting or challenging voices.”

After the JC raised concerns with the Charity Commission and the Home Office, government officials opened an investigation into Adat Yeshua, particularly its treatment of the D’Costa family, whose case potentially breaches sponsorship rules. They also said they were liaising with police over potential breaches of the Modern Slavery Act.

The D’Costas’ ordeal

Vulnerable: Dennis D’Costa, who travelled with his family from Kerala, India to convert to Judaism with the Adat Yeshua community in Norwich[Missing Credit]

Father-of-two Dennis D’Costa, 41, a project manager from Kerala, India, and his wife had long dreamed of reconnecting with the Jewish faith that their Sephardi ancestors had lost over generations. Not halachically Jewish, they sought conversion. With no rabbis or beth din in India and difficulty securing a visa to Israel, the Adat Yeshua website looked ideal. The conversion programme was cheaper than other options and, over email, Sheldrake was convincing.

D’Costa thought that Sheldrake’s use of Christian ideas was intended to make Judaism more relatable to new converts. “When he talked about Jesus, it was to make us understand the Jewish teachings,” D’Costa recalled. The 18-page rabbi training manual – which bears the word ‘messianic’ on the cover – from Sheldrake omitted any other mention of Christ and D’Costa had no idea that “Adat Yeshua” means “community of Jesus”. The family made their intentions clear: they wanted to convert to Judaism, not Christianity.

In December 2020, impressed by D’Costa’s self-taught Jewish knowledge, Sheldrake invited him to join his so-called “rabbinic internship” programme. He promised a steady income for the family while D’Costa underwent conversion, followed by ordination from a “beth din”. The Home Office approved the visa, which stated that D’Costa would “be spiritually trained and mentored for a period of three years to be approved by the Beit Din [sic]” and would become “fully qualified rabbi” at the “synagogue”.

Within months, inspired by the opportunity to start a Jewish life, the D’Costas sold everything they had. Mrs D’Costa resigned from her teaching job at an international school. They pulled their children, then aged 11 and four, out of private education, took out a three million rupee (£30,000) loan and set off on an Etihad flight to their new life in England.

It was October 2021 when they arrived, tired and hungry, at Heathrow Airport. After spending a week in a quarantine hotel, the family was taken to Sheldrake’s cramped flat on the outskirts of Norwich. There they had to sleep under a single dirty blanket on the floor of his sitting room. “It smelt awful and was very cold,” D’Costa recalled.

He contacted Caroline Ralph, chair of the Adat Yeshua trustees and a benefactor of the charity. Ralph – a cousin of Queen Camilla and daughter of Sir Geoffrey Howe, deputy prime minister under Margaret Thatcher – was reassuring. Shortly afterwards, Adat Yeshua put the family up in a bed-and-breakfast.

But it would not be for long. Within weeks, they were moved to another congregant’s home where they were squeezed into a box room. “My daughter was on the single bed and my wife, son and I slept on the floor beneath the bed,” D’Costa said. “It was horrendous.” So the nightmare began. He wrestled with the idea of returning to India. “We could not open a bank account and struggled to rent a flat, as Adat Yeshua had not given me an employment contract or payslip. All I had was my Home Office document.”

Their money was quickly running out and D’Costa had yet to be paid by Adat Yeshua as he had been promised. Despite their hardship, D’Costa and his wife continued to trust the charismatic “rabbi”, believing he was a “man of God” and that the obstacles would be overcome.

“India’s Jewish community had not had a rabbi for years, so when someone said they were a rabbi, I revered and trusted them,” he explained.

D’Costa – who has project management skills – found that he was expected to undertake duties he had not anticipated. Sheldrake pushed him to develop money-making schemes for Adat Yeshua, including a failed attempt to secure state funding for a school. D’Costa was also asked to develop a far-fetched idea to build an Israeli-style hydroponics farm in Norfolk. It likewise came to nothing.

His aunt, who lives in the Netherlands, warned D’Costa something was “not right” with Sheldrake. Still under the rabbi’s powerful influence, however, he ignored the caution – even as his financial situation went from bad to worse. D’Costa was unable to afford his children’s school uniform and was forced to use food banks.

“Sheldrake would say that I needed to learn to be humble because I’m Jewish and Jews are proud,” D’Costa recalled.

As summer drew on, Sheldrake’s tone changed, he claimed. He began describing Jesus as “the saviour and Messiah”, not just a historical Jewish figure. By this time, the D’Costas had already sacrificed too much to walk away. Questioning Sheldrake – and Yeshua – meant questioning God.

During some periods, they were given handouts by Adat Yeshua; £500 in January and February 2022, which dropped to £300 by March and nothing in April. In July 2022, D’Costa was paid £800 as well as a £500 handout – still less than the promise on the Home Office document, which said Adat Yeshua would pay him £1,371 a month.

After one session, Sheldrake cornered D’Costa. “You need to bring Yeshua into your Torah portion,” he ordered, D’Costa recalled. The pressure extended to D’Costa’s wife. “Control your husband’s study sessions,” he told her. “People aren’t happy that he doesn’t mention Yeshua.”

In November 2022, Sheldrake sent a message to an Adat Yeshua group chat demanding everyone write: “Yeshua is Lord, and God and is my salvation.” When D’Costa refused, Ralph stepped in, accusing him of being “inflammatory”. Desperate not to be sacked, he typed: “Yeshua is Lord and saviour” in capital letters.

Andrew Sheldrake addressed a civic Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in Lowestoft as a tallit-wearing rabbi[Missing Credit]

Then came the threats. “He said that Jews were deserving of death because they opposed Yeshua,” D’Costa alleged. It had taken nearly a year for him to accept the what he now saw as the truth; Sheldrake was no rabbi. Still, he felt trapped. “I had to shut my mouth and take whatever he directed at me, otherwise I would have been thrown out,” he said. “It was like the Inquisition. I have my family here on my work visa. If I left Adat Yeshua, then we would have had to leave the UK. We had given up everything to come and convert to Judaism. Leaving would have made us a failure.”

His spirit broken, D’Costa asked for more financial help. Ralph offered the family subsidised accommodation. He paid her £900 in rent for the house – more than his Adat Yeshua salary – and the family continued to live hand-to-mouth.

In August 2023, D’Costa’s health collapsed. His leg seized up in paralysis and chest pains left him in agony. An ambulance rushed him to hospital, where he underwent MRI scans and X-rays, but a diagnosis did not come for some time. Despair set in. “I thought I should end my life.”

Mrs D’Costa, by then working as a teaching assistant, left her job to care for her immobile husband for three months. She urged him to seek mental health support and, in therapy, the diagnosis was clear: chronic stress disorder.

“The therapist told me my condition was caused by the pressure put on my body by Adat Yeshua,” he says. “It was too much for me to bear.”

Eventually, D’Costa approached Citizens Advice. It had concerns relating to the Modern Slavery Act and advised him to report Sheldrake to the police. He chose not to do so, but agreed to take civil action instead. An employment tribunal is scheduled for later this month.

D’Costa now works as a project manager in Norwich, while his wife teaches maths and computer science at a local school. Their children, now 14 and seven, are thriving. The family has begun the Masorti conversion process, finally pursuing the journey they started five years ago. “The whole purpose of us moving was an inter-generational longing to return to Judaism,” D’Costa says. “He lured us here. Now we must make the best of it.”

‘We teach gentiles what it meant to be Jewish’

Jesus-believing Sheldrake had his first Jewish experience during a high school production of Fiddler on the Roof[Missing Credit]

When the JC visited Adat Yeshua, Sheldrake, 60, insisted “we never lie to anyone”. Yet he accepted that many Jews are unhappy with his enterprise. Inside the church hall he calls a “synagogue”, he acknowledged: “The problems always come when we mention the Y-word, Yeshua.”

He also later told the JC: “When potential converts come to us for conversion we make it very clear that this will not confer upon them any recognition in the ‘traditional’ Jewish community, nor any ability to claim Aliyah. All converts know this from day one. There is no confusion.”

The “rabbi” who grew up atheist, with no Jewish relatives, now says he leads a community “somewhere between Reform and Masorti” which is “biblically kashrut”, claiming he is pioneering a new path for Messianic Jews around the world.

Sheldrake proudly calls himself a “Jewish rabbi”. He described his first Jewish experience during a high school production of Fiddler on the Roof, when he watched the Sabbath Prayer from the wings and became “rooted to the spot in a deeply spiritual experience of God”.

Those words that he first heard on stage became part of his vernacular. With its rabbi, mikvah, chuppah, Sefer Torah even chevra kadisha, who secured approval from Norwich council to bury members in the local Jewish cemetery, Sheldrake’s appropriation of Jewish terminology is pervasive.

“We are confronting the same issues of legitimacy as Reform and Liberal movements did back in the day. You work with the badges of authenticity you’ve got,” he said.

But his own Jewish authenticity is highly questionable. Sheldrake’s conversion and ordination were conducted under the now defunct Union of British Messianic Jewish Congregations (UBMJC). When asked for details, he is vague, describing his conversion as “ad hoc”.

This has not stopped Sheldrake from running conversion causes and rabbinical training programmes.

“Reform Judaism started doing their own conversions, so why couldn’t we?” he said. “We need to teach gentiles what it meant to be Jewish.”

The final question on Sheldrake’s course asks whether a convert would die for Judaism. “When the door gets kicked in and the cattle truck is outside, will you get in?

“If you’re not willing to pay the ultimate price, then this is not for you,” Sheldrake told the JC.

The London Beth Din confirmed that the Adat Yeshua conversion course is not recognised by any mainstream body. “Messianic Judaism bears no relationship to Judaism,” a spokesman said. “Any conversion conducted by the Norwich Messianic Synagogue will not be recognised by us.”

Inside Adat Yeshua, the "synagogue" which preaches about Jewish salvation[Missing Credit]

But Sheldrake claimed to receive frequent emails from prospective Jewish converts. “Last week, I had three a day asking for conversion,” he boasted.

In sermons streamed on YouTube, he preaches about Jewish “salvation,” and urges Jews to embrace Yeshua.

Following Hamas’s October 7 attack, he said: “If I had known I would have prayed for those children and young people at the rave [Nova festival] that they would have found Yeshua and had a chance at salvation.”

In other sermons, he speaks about “provoking the Jewish community here to come back to light” and prays: “God will continue that provocation unto salvation.”

With background in education and his rabbinic title, Sheldrake has positioned himself as a Jewish outreach expert, speaking to hundreds of schoolchildren about Judaism. “If I go into schools and talk to them about Judaism, then I’ve done a mitzvah,” he says. This year alone, he’s hosted half a dozen school visits. While he denies proselytising, he admits to mentioning Messianic Judaism “within the spectrum of Judaism” if asked.

On education podcasts, he has advocated for messianic Judaism to be taught as part of mainstream Judaism in schools and at the University of East Anglia (UEA), he approached students, identifying himself as a “Jewish rabbi”.

He addressed a civic Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in Lowestoft as a tallit-wearing rabbi. To mark HMD this year, he was invited to speak at a prison.

Yet Sheldrake lamented that he was “not being given the opportunities” to play a large role in Jewish life. He aspires to sit on the Board of Deputies. “We have enough Jews here, both ethnic and converts, to be represented,” he said.

However, his organisation received a synagogue security grant from the CST after October 7 and Sheldrake called the Jewish security charity “wonderful and welcoming”. The CST also offered support after a 2021 graffiti attack when “kike free Palestine” and a swastika were sprayed on the Adat Yeshua door.

A CST spokesperson said: “The CST was instructed by the Home Office to include this location within the Jewish Community Protective Security Grant. We had no option in the matter.”

Despite Sheldrake’s assurances that he “never lies” to members and is always “welcoming and friendly”, the JC has spoken to several who have described a regime of unpaid labour, financial control and coercive behaviour, including isolation from their families.

The charismatic leader seems able to inspire deep devotion in his followers. One couple with five children relocated from Glasgow to Norwich to join the community in 2020, while another former follower, Debbie Owens, 60, even allowed Sheldrake to dictate her letters. “They got me to a point where I did not trust myself,” she recalls. “This evil needs to be exposed.”

Other former members report being asked to take out loans to help renovate the Adat Yeshua building, change their will to include Adat Yeshua and donate 10 per cent of their income to the organisation.

Mother-of-two Emmanuella Khoom, 57, moved from King’s Lynn to Norwich in December 2017 when Sheldrake promised her a Jewish life. The graphic designer recalled Sheldrake’s warnings about mainstream Jewish groups. “Sheldrake told us to keep to ourselves and not speak to the other Jews,” she said.

“He said their leader was not a proper rabbi, that he was gay.” After six years, she finally mustered the courage to leave the group. “I am devastated,” she said. “I thought I had joined the Jewish people. Now I realise it was all a lie. I took on the Holocaust as my own history. Now I have nothing.”

“Broad vision”: the succah inside the Adat Yeshua building[Missing Credit]

Home Office investigation

Responding to the JC’s investigation, a Home Office spokesman said: “We are investigating to determine if the organisation has complied with their duties as a sponsor. Sponsoring organisations must meet strict duties and be able to offer genuine vacancies in order to obtain a licence.

“Where a sponsor fails in those duties, or sponsors workers for non-genuine vacancies we will take action, including revoking their licence.”

A Charity Commission spokesman said: “We are aware of potential concerns raised regarding Adat Yeshua Messianic Synagogue and are assessing information to determine if there is a role for the Commission.”

The Office of the Chief Rabbi is also aware of Adat Yeshua. A spokesman told the JC: “Sadly, it is not uncommon for messianic congregations to present themselves either as a Jewish community or as a natural home for Jews. Doing so is disingenuous and entirely erroneous.

“Messianic ‘Judaism’ is not in fact Judaism by any recognised definition. The distinction should be straightforward.

“Any theology which ascribes Divine attributes or insight to Jesus cannot be considered Jewish and should not be recognised as such by any local or national authority.”

When presented with the allegations made by former members, Sheldrake told the JC that the accounts “appear fabricated or exaggerated by individuals with other agendas”.

He added: “We aim to be a welcoming and friendly place for our community, whilst recognising that concerns may be raised by individuals and we aim to be supportive. We encourage people to seek external help and support where necessary.

“Everyone in the community participates in the life of the synagogue freely and voluntarily.

“Many members of the community volunteer their time and effort to keep the synagogue building running, including members of the leadership.

“Adat Yeshua and the union to which we are affiliated (UBMS) fully ascribe to the broad vision and theology of the global messianic Jewish movement. Our distinctive is the conversionary theology which is an emerging trend within the global movement. Messianic Judaism is unique amongst Judaisms for accepting Yeshua as the Jewish (not Christian) messiah. All messianic Jews accept Yeshua’s deity. Messianic Judaism embraces a fully Jewish identity and is working hard to establish this in the realms of theology, liturgy and lifestyle.

“I represent my community as a messianic Jewish rabbi. I am registered with SACRE (Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education) as a speaker, and I have been accredited with the RE Hubs Quality Kitemark, a nationally recognised training and accreditation scheme, for delivering religious education at schools. Schools approach me to undertake religious education sessions on aspects of Judaism in line with the RE curriculum.” Sheldrake denied that he operated a cult. “Over the 30 years of our existence, many people have moved on, and to our knowledge none have developed suicidal ideation as a result,” he said.

He said: “We have a hardship fund for emergency situations. In addition, all members of the community can access support from the synagogue foodbank.

“There has been a recent upsurge in attacks against the Messianic Jewish community in Israel, including women and children, by members of other Jewish faith strands. We deplore all forms of violence and coercion, especially against the weak and vulnerable.”

Sheldrake added: “D’Costa put signatures to doctrinal obedience to those statements as part of his application for the rabbinic training in 2020. His argument that he was not aware of our belief in Yeshua’s divinity well into his stay with us is null and void.

“We have never and will never pretend to be ‘mainstream Judaism’ if by that we mean Orthodox/ Rabbinic Judaism.

“When potential converts come to me asking for conversion and it is clear that they are not messianic but seeking a different Jewish path, I always advise them to connect with either Orthodox or Reform/Liberal rabbis to take their journey further.”

Caroline Ralph said: “On one occasion, I offered subsidised accommodation to one of the synagogue’s rabbinic interns and his family. He was supported financially by the synagogue.”