The word provoke usually has a negative connotation.

“Don’t provoke your sister!” “The coach yelled at his players seeking to provoke a response. “He kept provoking me until I finally decked him!”

It is rarely a soft, nice, positive word. However this word provoke is what the English translators of many of the New Covenant translations used for Romans 11:11.

“I say the, [has Israel] stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles.”

The Greek word here is parazeloo. Like in English, it can have a positive meaning and a negative one. If you parazeloo the Lord, you are provoking Him to jealousy and may come under judgment — not good! However, Paul also uses this word when seeking to stir people to action. In context it is this second meaning, to arouse, attract or awaken, that Paul was seeking to convey in Romans 11:11.

When Paul challenges the Romans to provoke Israel to jealously, he means to arouse them to interest in the faith. In fact many English translations use the verbiage, “To arouse to jealousy.”

All that is to say, that the believers from the nations of the worlds (who received the gospel because of the witness of the Jewish apostles from Jerusalem), are called to live in such a way that there is a focused, intentional witness towards the Jewish people. This witness is to be rooted – no, drenched – in the fruit of the Spirit and the power of the Spirit.

Furthermore, those of us who are Jewish believers, are also called to reach our own people. Paul, the apostle says to the nations, “I am talking to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them.” (Romans 11:13-14)

Paul was saying, “Okay, it is great being an international evangelistic apostle and all, but I also want to reach my own people. May the anointing that I walk in (which included raising the dead and causing earthquakes while worshipping at midnight) arouse, provoke and attract my Jewish brothers to faith in Yeshua.”

Summary:
We are a congregation of Jews and non-Jews who love Yeshua and live in Jerusalem. we are all called and anointed to reach the Jewish people by arousing jealousy because of close, intimate relationship with God. This needs to be expressed to Israel through love, good works and a demonstration of the power of God.