'Rabbinic Messianic’ couple discovers Boulder, CO attacker was their neighbor

David and Rivkah Costello, who identify as “Rabbinic Messianic” Jews and are anti-Trinitarian, learned after a visit from the FBI that their neighbor was the perpetrator of the anti-Zionist attack in Boulder, CO.

“The first we heard about it was the FBI coming in and telling us and sitting us down,” David told Fox News. “We had two FBI guys, fully armed.”

David added that they had only interacted once with the attacker's family, as the couple had only recently moved into the neighborhood.

“The wife came over and gave us some cupcakes,” he said. “We keep kosher, so we couldn't eat them, but we accepted them and then we just sort of threw them away.”

David said that the attacker would have driven past their home on the way to the attack.

“He had to drive past our house to go to Boulder,” he said. “I was wearing tzitzits. I had a kippah on my head. We had a mezuzah on the door.”

“It’s really by the grace of HaShem that we weren’t attacked,” David added. “It’s pretty obvious that we’re Jewish, like he could have easily just thrown a Molotov cocktail at our door.”

He also said he believed that the mezuzah on their door provided them spiritual protection.

“There’s a story in Judaism about [how] the mezuzahs protect you, and I really think…the protection of the mezuzah’s [was] what protected us.”

The couple, who have five children, say they believe that Jesus is the Messiah, but deny the Trinity, and believe in the oral Torah.

“As Jewish followers of Yeshua we believe that it is our duty to closely follow the Messiah, and it is our duty as Jews to uphold the Oral and the Written Torah,” they explain on their website.

“The Oral Torah comes from Moshe, given by HaShem at the time of the written Torah,” they further explain.

David explained his opposition to the Trinity in a video on TikTok, calling himself a “unitarian.”

The Costellos' beliefs contradict both Rabbinic Judaism and historic Christianity, as Judaism rejects the claim that Jesus was the Messiah, while Christianity has historically regarded the denial of Jesus’ divine nature as heresy.

Most people who identify as Messianic Jews reject anti-Trinitarian teachings.

The couple has previously made headlines for being told to leave Orthodox Jewish communities in both Brooklyn and Chicago, after being accused of entering them for "the purpose of proselytizing."

“People feel betrayed,” a Chicago rabbi told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) in 2019. “If you want to believe in something and sell it, that’s your business. But to come into a community and portray to be something you’re not, prey on people, unsuspecting, is unacceptable.”

The couple denied that their involvement in these communities was under false pretenses, but said they left the communities when asked to.

“We believe in Yeshua as the Messiah,” Rivkah told the NY Post. “People don’t like that.”

According to the JTA, David “says his maternal great-grandmother was Jewish,” and that Rivkah “may have some Jewish ancestry on her father’s side but has not been able to verify it.”