Evangelizing the Jews

Jewish Telegraphic Agency series on evangelizing Jews and messianic congregations

Messianics Rising

Growing evangelical movement finding new ways to proselytize

by By Barry Yeoman, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 15, 2007

This report results from the JTA's extensive investigation of the groups evangelizing Jews. Author Yeoman reports that:

Hundreds of organizations now exist to persuade Jews that their salvation depends on accepting Jesus as Messiah. Many of these groups are connected through a network of organizations with media- and Internet-savvy staffs, as well as well-oiled fund-raising operations.
While Catholics and mainline Protestants have eschewed the practice, some of the largest evangelical denominations -- Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God, Missouri-Synod Lutherans -- have stepped up their conversion efforts. Independent missions have been on the upswing, too.

Some of these organizations, says author Yeoman, have established college and seminary concentrations on "Messianic Judaism." Also notable is JTA's finding that Jews for Jesus and its analogs are recruiting evangelical Christians to proselytizing their Jewish co-workers (and, in the case of a home health worker, her patients).

The evangelicals who target Jews find great recruitment opportunities among Russian Jews, according to the report. Yeoman writes of a community center founded and supported by evangelical Christians in a Russian neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Chosen People Ministries helped launched the center and New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church provides funding. Jews for Jesus leads services for those curious about Christianity, and a Russian Baptist church holds Bible studies. Another congregation sponsors worship services for recovering drug addicts and their families.
Two summers ago, the center became a staging ground as Jews for Jesus missionaries descended on Brighton Beach en masse as part of their Behold Your God campaign.
Throughout the year, the center teaches sewing and offers citizenship assistance. But the bulk of its evangelism comes by way of inexpensive English classes -- two hours of small-group instruction followed by 30 minutes of mandatory Old and New Testament study.

To read this important report, click here.

'Friendship' evangelists eschew street, cozy up to prospective converts

by Barry Yeoman, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 15, 2007

FAIRFAX, Va. (JTA) -- The smell of fried latkes permeates Darrin and Sharon Speck’s two-story townhouse in this Washington suburb. It’s the second night of Chanukah, and the couple have gathered some friends and neighbors to celebrate.

Three-dimensional Stars of David dangle over the entrance to a living room scattered with chocolate gelt. Small children, including two of their own, crawl around and babble.

The only incongruous element is the Marty Goetz CD. The Jewish-born former Catskills singer found Jesus in 1978, and now his rendition of “Ma’oz Tzur” blends seamlessly into “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” Otherwise there are few cues in the room that the Specks are Christian. Continue.

Messianics are praying the 'Shema,' but preaching Jesus as the Messiah

Barry Yeoman, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 15, 2007

CARY, N.C. (JTA) -- The Shabbat morning service at Congregation Sha’arei Shalom in this suburb of Raleigh has a familiar feel to anyone who grew up in a mainstream American synagogue.

Sixty adults and a handful of children have gathered in a sanctuary adorned with seven-branched menorahs and an Israeli flag. Many of the men wear yarmulkes and tallitot; the women are dressy but not ostentatious.

After morning prayers and a silent Amidah, a congregational leader opens a small ark and removes a Torah scroll. He holds it aloft as the room fills with the familiar chanting of the "Shema" and "Echad Eloheinu."

Before the Torah procession begins, the worshipers recite an additional prayer in Hebrew: “Yeshua hu ha-Mashiach hu adon hakol,” meaning “Jesus, He is the Messiah, and He is Lord over all.” Continue.

Messianic truth in advertising

By Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz, Los Angeles Jewish Journal, June 26, 2008. Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz is the founding director of Jews for Judaism International

The growth of the Jews for Jesus and messianic movements in Israel, especially during Israel's 60th anniversary, is unprecedented and an outcome of unrestrained relationships with fundamentalist Christians.

There are more than 15,000 messianic Jews residing in Israel and more than 275,000 in the Diaspora. Jews for Jesus now has an office in Tel Aviv, with a staff of 10 that includes several Israeli-born messianic Jewish couples, and they have launched a five-year crusade to proselytize Israelis. Last month they spent over $500,000 for full-page ads in four Israeli papers and ads on buses and billboards. They have already handed out more than 75,000 missionary tracts and received contact information from 850 Israelis.

Furthermore, some Israeli politicians and prominent rabbis are associating with messianic Jews, inadvertently lending them credibility. Others rabbis were outraged about a messianic Jew in the International Bible Quiz for Jewish youth and called for a boycott. Of grave concern are the actions of messianic lawyer Calev Myers, who has been fighting in the Israeli Supreme Court for messianic rights, including initiating changes in the law of return that recently enabled a dozen messianic missionaries to become Israeli citizens. Continue.

Christian Missionaries to Protest Discrimination in Israel

by Hana Levi Julian, Arutz Sheva (Israeli settler news organizations), June 26, 2008

(IsraelNN.com) The US-based Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations has thrown down the gauntlet in what may become a renewed battle over the issue of who has the right to immigrate to Israel.

The group is an umbrella organization for approximately 80 American Christian missionary congregations comprised of worshippers who seek to convince Jews to believe in Jesus. In their houses of worship, these congregations observe some Jewish traditions. But while Jewish law clearly says that Judaism is passed to the next generation through the mother, these missionary congregations say that if the father is Jewish, that's enough.

Some of the missionaries were born to Jewish mothers and are therefore Jewish according to Jewish law. Under the State's current Law of Return anyone with at least one Jewish parent or grandparent on either side of the family is eligible to immigrate to Israel. It is this law that enabled the Jewish Agency to utilize Jewish funds to bring in some 300,000 non-Jews to Israel from the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Continue.

Update on the Case of Ami Ortiz

The case of 15-year-old Ami Ortiz, critically injured in March by a bomb concealed in a holiday gift package, continues to draw attention here in Israel.

In one of the latest developments, Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, met with Israeli Minister of Internal Security Avi Dichter about the investigation.

Dichter assured Sekulow that he was personally overseeing the case, while Sekulow conveyed the message that U.S. senators and congressman are deeply concerned that the perpetrators be brought to justice. Continue.

Messianic Jews to protest 'discrimination'

A contingent of about 300 Messianic Jews from the US will protest this weekend against what they call Israel's discriminatory immigration policy against Jews who believe that Jesus is the messiah.

The Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, an umbrella body for about 80 US congregations, is holding a three-day conference in Jerusalem that starts Thursday.

During the conference a number of issues will be discussed - including the recent public burning by haredim of New Testaments distributed by missionaries in Or Akiva, a bomb attack that seriously wounded the son of well-known Messianic Jew in Ariel and the attempt to disqualify a Messianic Jewish high school girl from this year's International Bible Quiz for Jewish youth. Continue.

Messianic Jews say they are persecuted in Israel

Tel Aviv, Israel -- Safety pins and screws are still lodged in 15-year-old Ami Ortiz's body three months after he opened a booby-trapped gift basket sent to his family. The explosion severed two toes, damaged his hearing and harmed a promising basketball career.

Police say they are still searching for the assailants. But to the Ortiz family the motive of the attackers is clear: The Ortizes are Jews who believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

Israel's tiny community of Messianic Jews, a mixed group of 10,000 people who include the California-based Jews for Jesus, complains of threats, harassment and police indifference. Continue.

Israel's Messianic Jews Under Attack

The flyers appeared everywhere inside the Jewish settlement of Ariel, on car windshields and telephone poles, and in bus shelters. "Beware," it read, "these are the members of the Jewish Missionary Cult. They are baptizing Jews into Christianity." Included was a photo of Pastor David Ortiz and his address.

Ortiz didn't give it a thought. His Jewish neighbors liked him, and so did Ariel's mayor, who found Ortiz, originally from Brooklyn, useful in recruiting funds and political support from American and German Evangelicals for this stone-clad settlement on a breezy hilltop inside Palestinian territory. Continue.

Southern Baptists rely on deception in effort to convert Jews.

Messianic Congregations Offer Reassuring Jewish Symbols

by JewsOnFirst.org, June 25, 2007

Six million Jews and only 15 Southern Baptist Messianic Churches! That juxtaposition by a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) official involved in the denomination's aggressive evangelizing of Jews prompted JewsOnFirst to ask the SBC: is its objective to empty Judaism of American Jews and make them all Messianic Southern Baptists? We also talk with rabbis and Christian clergy about the Southern Baptists' use of "Jewish-style" Christianity and Christian Zionism in their efforts to convert Jews.

Accompanying our report are two recorded conversations -- one with Rabbi Neal Katz and Rabbi Barry Block, both of Texas, and the other with members of the Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism. Please click here.

Church needs Jewish believers, prof says

INDIANAPOLIS (BP)--The Christian church needs Messianic believers -- Jews who follow Jesus as the Messiah -- for the same reason a man and woman need each other to be one flesh, a California Baptist University professor told the Southern Baptist Messianic Fellowship June 7.

Stokes addressed the afternoon session of the fellowship's annual meeting, held prior to the Southern Baptist Convention's June 10-11 annual meeting in Indianapolis.

"God is one, and He created man and woman and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh,'" said Bruce Stokes, who also leads The DiscipleCenter congregation in Anaheim Hills, Calif. "She doesn't become male and he doesn't become female. The oneness requires both of them." Continue.

Messianics aid in cultural understanding

INDIANAPOLIS (BP)--The Southern Baptist Messianic Fellowship, now recognized as an official ethnic and language ministry of the North American Mission Board, is eager to help SBC churches understand the Jewish culture for purposes of evangelism.

The fellowship's annual meeting will begin with a Shabbat service on Friday, June 6, at 7 p.m. in Room 208 on level two of the Indiana Convention Center. The group also will have a booth in the exhibit hall during the June 10-11 SBC annual meeting in Indianapolis.

Ric Worshill, president of the fellowship, said the SBMF's main objective is to lead people to eternal life in Jesus the Messiah. They work to strengthen Messianic believers and to assist with training and resources for non-Jewish believers who wish to reach Jews with the Gospel. Continue.

Knights in shining armor or Trojan horses?

Lately there has been high praise from many Jewish circles for Christian support for Israel. Some Jewish supporters call the Evangelical Christians, 'Our best friends'. I am often asked if Evangelical Christians really our friends, or do they have a hidden agenda?

There is irrefutable evidence that many evangelicals who support Israel have implemented a new "soft-sell" approach to proselytizing Jews for conversion.

In the words of Joe Dean, founder of an American Christian-Zionist organization, "By standing with the Jewish people in love and support, we can provoke them to jealousy, as the apostle Paul said, 'so as to win them to Christ.' Not by cramming the gospel down their throats, but by showing that our faith produces faithful works. I have told the Jewish agencies that we are not an evangelical group as such, and this is true. We are not actively trying to win Jews to Christ -- but by taking this stand, the Jewish people don't run away from us, and we are able to witness to them indirectly." Continue.

Passion for taking Gospel to Jews drives NAMB missionaries

WASHINGTON CROSSING, Pa. (BP)--Paul Vermillion, a Mission Service Corps missionary for the North American Mission Board, has one overarching passion: to introduce the greatest Jew who ever lived to today’s Jewish people who don’t know Him.

From his base of operations in Washington Crossing, Pa. –- about 34 miles northeast of Philadelphia and famous as the place where George Washington crossed the Delaware River –- Vermillion and wife Marla have run New Covenant Fellowship since 2002. Continue

Southern Baptists: Evangelism in Chicago stirs debate

Southern Baptists rebuff critics of Chicago evangelism plan.

Chicago may have a reputation for generosity toward strangers, but this summer visiting Southern Baptists may find fewer welcome mats on urban doorsteps. This year the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) launches its Strategic Cities Initiative, a new effort for evangelism and community service in major metropolitan areas. The campaign will include Chicago, which is home to one of the nation's largest Roman Catholic Archdioceses and is a primary population center for Jews.

As information about the campaign developed, SBC critics pushed the unfounded report that 100,000 Southern Baptists would converge on Chicago like an invading army.

How did a three-year, service-based outreach to Chicago get misrepresented as a plague of hit-and-run evangelists shoving the gospel down the throats of unwary citizens? Why is the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews breaking ties with the SBC, as Hindus worldwide declare the SBC's style of proselytizing arrogant and obtuse? Continue.

Messianic Jewish missionary groups funded by Christians

Jews for Jesus and Chosen People Ministries rely on Christian donations

by JewsOnFirst, August 15, 2006

To enlist Jewish organizations' support for the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) kickoff banquet last month, the group's leader, Pastor John Hagee, promised that there would be no missionizing to Jews. (See our report)

Hagee and the major religious right leaders he's brought on to CUFI's board, support Israel as "Christian Zionists," because they believe that, when all the world's Jews are collected there, Jesus will reappear and "rapture up to heaven" Jews who have converted to Christianity along with Christians. And their theology holds that only believers in Jesus can be "saved."

Nevertheless, it was an easy promise for Hagee to make.

Evangelizing of Jews proceeds apace. American Christian organizations have operated missions to the Jews since the 1800s. And Christian Zionists like Hagee's group, regardless of what they say, do some low-key missionizing. But today, the most successful Christian missionaries to Jews are two ostensibly Jewish groups -- Jews for Jesus and the Chosen People Ministries. Both rely on Christians for major parts of their operations. Continue

Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America, 1880 - 2000

With this book, Yaakov Ariel offers the first comprehensive history of Protestant evangelization of Jews in America to the present day. Based on unprecedented research in missionary archives as well as Jewish writings, the book analyzes the theology and activities of both the missions and the converts and describes the reactions of the Jewish community, which in turn helped to shape the evangelical activity directed toward it.

Ariel delineates three successive waves of evangelism, the first directed toward poor Jewish immigrants, the second toward American-born Jews trying to assimilate, and the third toward Jewish baby boomers influenced by the counterculture of the Vietnam War era. After World War II, the missionary impulse became almost exclusively the realm of conservative evangelicals, as the more liberal segments of American Christianity took the path of interfaith dialogue. Continue

Programs To Convert Jews To Christianity

Quotation: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Christian Scriptures (New Testament), John 14:6. That passage has been a prime motivator of Christian evangelical activity towards Jews and other non-Christians:

Overview: Relations between Christians and Jews have traditionally been horrific. Christians have a past history of exterminating large numbers of Jews and/or forcibly converting Jews to Christianity. Continue

Jewish education is the vaccine against conversion-itis

Commentary by Rabbi Avi Shafran, ECHAD RESOURCES

by Rabbi Avi Shafran, St. Louis Jewish Light, August 11, 2006
(Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America)

This July, like so many before it, New York City's oppressive summer weather is being accompanied by another perennially irritating mass of hot air. "Jews for Jesus" this year along with "The Chosen People Ministries" and the "Christian Jew Foundation Ministries" are out in force, trying to convince Jews that relinquishing their faith in favor of a contrary belief system (one, even, in whose name untold numbers of Jews over the centuries were made to suffer and die) is somehow not an abandonment of Judaism but its "fulfillment."

Boosted by a budget of millions, Jews for Jesus alone has mailed material to 400,000 Jewish homes in the area, and Yiddish DVDs to 80,000 Orthodox ones. It is also running radio spots (complete with a klezmer Hava Nagila in the background) and placing ads in subways and newspapers. Continue

Messianic Group's Touchy Mission

Renewed D.C. Campaign of Jews for Jesus Brings Out the Counter-Leafleters

A two-week evangelical campaign designed to bring Jews to Jesus is underway in Washington, taking this question to Metro stations, Nationals games and popular spots like U Street: Is Jesus the Jewish messiah?

That is the core belief of the international missionary organization Jews for Jesus, the best known of dozens of messianic Jewish groups that have sprung up in recent decades. Followers believe that Jesus was the messiah mentioned in Jewish scripture. The group, which has a $17 million annual budget, defines its mission as "making the messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to Jewish people worldwide."

The group is loathed by many mainstream Jews. Washington area Jewish organizations and the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington have condemned the campaign, saying Jews for Jesus proselytizes too aggressively and misleads potential followers by using Jewish symbols, portraying their places of worship as synagogues and referring to Jesus by Hebrew names. Continue.

Jews for Jesus spread spiritual message in region

By Gary Stern and Ernie Garcia, The Journal News (Hudson Valley, NY) via ReligionNewsBlog.com, July 16, 2006

If you've been through downtown White Plains lately at midday, you've seen them. If you've gone through any number of train stations here or subways in the city, they seem to be everywhere. If you live in Rockland County and have a Jewish surname, you've probably received mail from them.

They may even knock on your door. Chat you up. Ask you if you've thought about Jesus. Then they tell you they're Jewish, and you know whom you're talking to. Continue

Jews For Jesus Ad Campaign Takes Over City Subway Stations

With its controversial ads visible in many of the city's subway stations, the Jews for Jesus $1.4 million summer marketing campaign has succeeded in eliciting a response from New Yorkers, but as NY1's Bobby Cuza reports, maybe not the positive one that the group probably hoped for. Continue

As Jews for Jesus hits New York, Jews for Judaism is out in force

NEW YORK, July 9 (JTA) — There’s a holy war of sorts going on in New York City. Jews for Jesus has been running campaigns here for 33 years, but the messianic group’s proselyting effort has never been as large as this summer — nor has it elicited such a united Jewish response.

The “Behold Your God” campaign represents the final stop of a five-year, $22 million tour of every city outside Israel with a Jewish population of 25,000 or more. Continue

Jews for Jesus Hit Town And Find a Tough Crowd

As part of what has become an annual summer rite, missionaries, many of them young people from across the country, are descending upon New York City, working in soup kitchens and spreading the word of God at street corners, parks and subway stations. But one group, Jews for Jesus, will be more visible than usual.

Jews Reaching Jews Campaign Wins Hundreds for Christ

NEW YORK – Thousands of blogs, media outlets, churches and synagogues were all talk about one of the most controversial and intensive campaigns that more than 150 Jesus-believing Jews made “unavoidable” this past month.

The result of the "Jesus for Jews" July campaign: 502 first-time decisions for Jesus Christ – 241 of them being Jews – and incessant talks about the Gospel throughout the cities. Continue

Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability

Click here for the Jews for Jesus member profile. And click here for the Chosen People Ministries' profile.

Announcement of a presentation by Jews for Jesus at an Indiana church

TWIN CITY BIBLE BAPTIST CHURCH, 7252 S. Meridian St., hosts Liberated Wailing Wall of Jews for Jesus at 6 p.m. July 23. The story of Jews coming to believe in Jesus through music, drama and personal testimony. Click here.

Jews for Jesus:

Targeting Jews for Conversion with Subterfuge and Deception

Jews for Jesus, the leading organization dedicated to converting Jews to Christianity, has long been a concern because of its aggressive proselytizing with a deceptive message: that Jews who accept Jesus as the son of God and their savior remain Jewish. Continue

'Volcanic' Response

Jews for Jesus takes to New York City streets.

Jews for Jesus (JFJ) recently finished a 66-month evangelistic campaign with a month-long New York finale. Two hundred missionaries worked the streets for JFJ's largest-ever campaign in New York, which boasts the largest Jewish population in the world outside Israel. They distributed 1 million tracts and collected contact information for more than 5,000 people. Continue

'Friendship' evangelists eschew street, cozy up to prospective converts

Three-dimensional Stars of David dangle over the entrance to a living room scattered with chocolate gelt. Small children, including two of their own, crawl around and babble.

Chosen People Ministries: Resources for your church

"Jesus, the Jews, and the Last Days" September 12-15 in Fort Worth, Texas

"Jesus, the Jews, and the Last Days" is a conference that will discuss the relationship of Yeshua (Jesus) to Jewish people and how both relate to fulfillment of biblical prophecy in the last days. Join Paige Patterson, Craig Blaising, Darrell Bock, Mitch Glaser and others for this great event. The brochure asks the question: Are we getting close to the End? Continue

A recommendation for those interested in Messianic Christianity

Messianic Judaism is a kind of stepchild of Christian movment. Many criticisms of this movement come from "anti-fullfilment missionaries." Anti-missionaries are Jewish writers who wish to challenge the claim that Christianity is any kind of natural extension or fulfillment of Christianity.Continue

Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability

Click here for the Jews for Jesus member profile. And click here for the Chosen People Ministries' profile.

Why Evangelize the Jews?

God's chosen people need Jesus as much as we do.

Guthrie writes: " love and respect the Jewish people and their faith. After all, Jesus was a Jew, and Christianity is firmly rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures. Certainly the Holocaust and the church's horrific anti-Semitism have changed the context for evangelism. We have much for which to apologize. But we cannot apologize for the gospel, which is Good News for Jewish people precisely because they—like all human beings—need Jesus. Click here.

Messianics Rising

Growing evangelical movement finding new ways to proselytize

This report results from the JTA's extensive investigation of the groups evangelizing Jews. Author Yeoman reports that:

Rabbis Ban Participation in ICEJ Conference

by Hillel Fendel, Arutz Sheva News (Israeli settler news organization), September 17, 2007

(IsraelNN.com) The Chief Rabbinate of Israel has issued a ruling welcoming the Christians arriving for the annual Feast of Tabernacles conference - and banning Jews from participating.

Feast of Tabernacles is sponsored by the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem, self-described as the world's largest Christian Zionist organization. The annual get-together is a week-long multicultural event held during the Sukkot holiday, which begins this year on Sept. 27. It draws tens of thousands of Christians from around the world for a week of teaching, worship, and prayer, and culminates with a march through the streets of Jerusalem. Continue.

'Convert-or-Die' Minister to Lead Visit to IDF Army Base

by Hillel Fendel, Arutz Sheva News (Israeli settler news organization), September 20, 2007

(IsraelNN.com) A Christian group led by a minister who teaches that ten million Jews are destined to be killed plans to visit an IDF base next week. A Jerusalem City Council member is trying to stop the visit.

The group leader is Richard Booker, a Christian minister and the Founder/Director of the Institute for Hebraic-Christian Studies who will be participating in the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) Feast of Tabernacles extravaganza this coming Sukkot holiday. First, however, he will lead a tour of devoted followers on a tour of northern Israel - including a visit to an Israeli army base. Continue.

God’s Harvard: The New Grooming Ground of the Evangelical Movement

A small Christian school outside the nation’s capital is dispatching the next round of evangelicals to the front lines of science and politics, where they will battle for control of the nation.

Hanna Rosin, excerpt from God’s Harvard: The New Grooming Ground of the Evangelical Movement, Harcourt Publishing, Alternet, August 23, 2007

When I first began covering religion for the Washington Post, more than ten years ago, deflecting conversion attempts became a routine part of my work. Although they are unfailingly gracious, evangelicals are not so good at respecting professional boundaries. What did it matter that I was a reporter doing my job if I was headed for eternal damnation? To a population of domestic missionaries, I presented as a prime target: a friendly non-Christian who was deeply interested in learning more about their beliefs.

The first time someone tried to share the gospel with me, I naively explained that I was Jewish and born in Israel, thank you, thinking this would end the conversation. This was a big mistake. In certain parts of Christian America, admitting I was an Israeli-born Jew turned me into walking catnip. Because God's own chosen people had so conspicuously rejected Jesus, winning one over was an irresistible challenge. And the Holy Land glamour of Israel only added to the allure. Preachers told me they loved me, half an hour after we met. Godly women asked if they could take home a piece of my clothing and pray over it. A pastor's wife once confided to my husband, "You're so lucky. She looks so ... Biblical." Once, at a Waffle House in Colorado with some associates of the influential Christian activist James Dobson, a woman in our company stared at me so hard it became uncomfortable for me to eat. Finally, I looked up at her. "When I look at you, I see the blood of our Savior coursing through your veins," she said. Continue.

In praise of Christian-Jewish interfaith dialogue

Back in May, the Chief Rabbinate criticized Jewish participation in a Christian women's conference organized in Jerusalem by the Knesset's Christian Allies Caucus. The issue generated controversy in the pages of The Jerusalem Post. Isi Leibler wrote an op-ed which argued that the Chief Rabbinate was wrong in its approach to the Evangelicals (June 12), while Ellen Horowitz's warned that participation in such events, where some of the organizations involved may be active in missionary work, was crossing theological red lines (June 20).

As a rabbi who entered the rabbinate in June 1963 with a strong bias against any inter-faith dialogue and cooperation, and who is now so passionate about the importance of inter-religious communication and study that I have established an Institute for the furtherance of Jewish - Christian Understanding in Efrat (where many Christians have been studying the Jewish roots of their faith), I want to state clearly the reasons for the sea-change in my outlook.

To paraphrase Charles Dickens in the beginning of his Tale of Two Cities: These are the best of times, and the worst of times. On the one hand, after almost 2,000 years of exile and persecution, culminating in the Holocaust, we have returned to our homeland, to Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem, to a Jewish army and a Jewish police force, and to the miracle of the ingathering of exiles, from the Ethiopian Beta Yisrael to the Indian Bnei Menashe. Continue.

Knights in shining armor or Trojan horses?

There is irrefutable evidence that many evangelicals who support Israel have implemented a new "soft-sell" approach to proselytizing Jews for conversion.

Prominent evangelical backs out of pro-Israel event over proselytizing disclaimer

Christian radio talk-show host Janet Parshall, a high-profile American evangelical known for her strong support of Israel, has dropped out of a Jerusalem conference sponsored by a Christian caucus of the Israeli Parliament. Parshall says she decided not to speak at the conference after she learned that the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus "condemns" and does not associate with groups that share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Parshall says she is also troubled that the strict religious political party Shas has yet again introduced legislation in the Knesset that would give up to a one-year prison sentence for people who share the gospel in Israel. "I thought, wait a minute: we can't just blindly support Israel," she observes. "We have to be able to tell them, as a friend, [that] you can't do that. You can't silence us." Continue

Taking kids spiritual hostage

Opinion article by Dennis & Sandy Sasso, Indianapolis Star via CrusadeWatch.com, February 6, 2007 (The Sassos are senior rabbis at Congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis.)

In June 1858, Edgar Mortara, a 6-year-old Italian boy, was taken from his parents' home to be educated as a Christian. The Mortara family's young housemaid had confessed to her priest that she had secretly baptized the boy to save his soul. When the priest reported the matter to Rome, Inquisition officials gave orders that the child be taken forcibly from his parents so that he could be raised in the Catholic faith.

Papal soldiers arrived at the Mortara home and abducted Edgar. Despite protests from Jewish and non-Jewish leaders in Europe, the church refused to return the child to his family. Edgar Mortara was educated in a convent and later entered the Augustine order, preaching at the Vatican and serving as a missionary.

This is 2007 and such things don't happen in our pluralistic and enlightened culture. We know better than to force our religion on others. How, then, are we to understand a call we received recently from a distraught parent. Her 8-year old Jewish child had accepted a friend's invitation to attend an event at a church youth group. It was to be a social gathering and the friend would get extra points if he brought a visitor.

The mother, suspecting nothing other than an afternoon of fun and games, consented. The child returned home hysterical. There were no stories or games played or snacks consumed. Instead she told her mother that a teacher had informed her that she was a sinner and would go to hell unless she read the New Testament regularly, she believed in Jesus and went to church. Continue.

Oratorio focuses on religious links

Koger performance to stress connections between Jewish, Christian traditions

Bonnie Jean Avilez, dressed in a flowing white skirt and gold vest adorned with a braid menorah, twirled with her fellow dancers in the synchronized steps of a sacred ritual.

There were stops and starts as practice got under way this week for "The Coronation of the King," a worship event at the Koger Center Sept. 2-3 that its creator hopes will spark connections among Christians and Jews. Continue.

As American As … Proselytization

Fireworks, the Fourth and Jesus.

Bowling Green, Ky. How often do you have to fend off a proselytizer in your neck of the woods? Here in Kentucky, where we’re one of about 20 Jewish families in a town of 49,000, we face proselytizing every week, through the front door, the neighborhood vegetable co-op, the church signs, and the local grocery store. Evangelical Christianity is everywhere in south-central Kentucky. It even takes over the Fourth of July celebration.

I’ve got the church ladies’ visits down to a science. Since I work from home, I’m never lucky enough to miss their knock at my front door. The dogs bark, I race from my upstairs office to greet the UPS man, and — oh no! — I’m face to face with smiling church ladies, complete with Bibles. I open the door, clutching my dogs. Continue.

Kosher Cooperation

Jewish elites broker new relations with evangelicals

Right after George W. Bush was elected President, David Harris asked members of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), "How many of you voted for Bush?" After an uncomfortable silence, a smattering of hands went up among several hundred people.

Such results do not surprise Harris, who is executive director of the AJC. He regularly asks fellow Jewish leaders, "How can we expect evangelical Christians to support our concerns if we support none of theirs?"

That mindset is changing. In May 2001 AJC leaders invited Bush to their annual meeting. The President told an attentive audience about his faith in Christ, his intolerance of religious bigotry, and his faith-based foreign policy. One AJC leader observed, "The wellspring of Bush's decency is his faith."

In June the AJC board informed staff members that relations with evangelicals were to be freer and more open—not cautious and defensive. Continue.

Baptist conversion effort is `open hunting' of Jews

Debra Nussbaum Cohen, Jewish Telegraphic Agency via Jewish News of Northern California, June 21, 1996

NEW YORK -- From the perspective of many Jews, it was bad enough when the 15.7 million-member Southern Baptist Convention last week appointed a minister to head up its effort to evangelize the Jews.

But it signaled a new and dangerous era to many in the Jewish community when the largest Protestant denomination in America then adopted a resolution singling out the Jewish people as a target for Christian evangelism.

It is now "theological open-hunting season on Jews," said Rabbi James Rudin, the American Jewish Committee's director of interreligious affairs.

He described the development as a "form of spiritual arrogance of the highest order."

The resolution adopted by the 14,000 Southern Baptists attending the group's annual convention, held last week in New Orleans, said, in part: "Our evangelism efforts have largely neglected the Jewish people, both at home and abroad." Continue.

Introduction of Guest Speaker, Dr. Buckner Fanning

by Rabbi Barry H. Block with a message from Rabbi Samuel M. Stahl, San Antonio,1996

Last week, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution urging its members to target Jews for conversion to Christianity. When we heard this, we in the Jewish community were both angry and sad. We were not, however, afraid. Our faith in God is secure. Our commitment to Judaism is resolute. Even the most ardent conversionary campaign will attract only the very few most vulnerable among us. No, we have nothing to fear. Instead, we were angry that a major religious movement in 1996 would say, in effect, “It’s not O.K. to be Jewish.” Some in our society will infer that Jews are now legitimate targets for discrimination and persecution, since we really ought not be Jews at all. Most of all, we were sad. Many Southern Baptists have been our friends. We are hurt that they so disrespect us that they want to convert us.

One voice, though, rang out in San Antonio, soothing our anger and healing our wounds. How fortunate we are that the voice belongs to Dr. Buckner Fanning, Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, surely the most influential Protestant minister in our city. In last Saturday’s San Antonio Express-News, Dr. Fanning distanced himself from the Southern Baptist Convention resolution. He thereby assured us that a leading Baptist voice would speak out in support of our Jewish community. He helped us to know that we are not alone. Continue.

Some of Their Best Friends Are Jews

The Rev. O.S. Hawkins is promising me eternal damnation, and we haven’t even ordered lunch yet.

It’s not his choice: all he can do is lay out my options, and until I accept Jesus, there are no options.

He wishes it were otherwise. “I know how this sounds to your people,” he says, “but literally some of my best friends are Jewish.”

Hawkins, a lean, sunburned man with the jocular air of a winning football coach, is pastor to the 28,000 members of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, the largest Southern Baptist congregation in the country. We are having lunch in an upscale Tex-Mex restaurant connected by tunnel to the church’s 20-building complex.

I am in Dallas to meet James Sibley, a congregant and colleague of Hawkins. Sibley is also the man appointed by the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention as its missionary to the Jews, and, as such, is a premier bogyman of American Jewry. Sibley’s mission received resounding approval in June at a Southern Baptist conclave in New Orleans; 14,000 “messengers” endorsed a resolution that Sibley wrote calling for Baptists to direct their “energies and resources toward the proclamation of the Gospel to the Jewish people.” Continue.