Bernard Jean Bettelheim

Bernard Jean Bettelheim was a physician who served as the first Anglican missionary to Japan. Born to a Hungarian Jewish family in Pressburg, Bettelheim was educated at a yeshiva in Trebitsch before studying medicine at various universities. He graduated from the University of Padua in 1836 and began to travel across the Mediterranean practicing medicine. While serving as a surgeon to an Ottoman military regiment in Manisa in 1840, he met a group of British missionaries and converted to Anglican Christianity. He traveled to London later that year and attempted to enter the Church Mission Society and preach to Jewish communities in the Mediterranean. He was rejected due to his recent conversion. After several years practicing medicine in London, he met Herbert Clifford, who had long sought to organize a Christian mission to the Ryukyu Kingdom. Bettelheim agreed to join his Loochoo Naval Mission and left with his family from England in 1845.