evangelism

[cellio]

Apparently Pittsburgh now has an infestistation of "Jews for Jesus". They are going to every city with a large-enough Jewish population; I gather that they're doing a combination of street-corner evangelizing, hitting up high-school and college students, and going door to door. So far I haven't seen 'em, but I assume I will at some point. No, I do not feel threatened. :-)

The Jewish community has known their schedule for ages, and local congregations and other organizations have been having programs (many aimed at parents) to discuss related issues. In an ideal world, that wouldn't be necessary because people would already be educated enough to spot disinformation when it's pushed on them. Oh well. (I note that congregations from all movements have been doing this, including the ones with full-time schools.)

I do wonder how much of this is overkill, though, given that the strong message from the rabbinic council -- covering all movements -- is to just ignore them. Every "engagement" counts as a point for them, and they take those numbers back to their funders (mostly evangelical churchas, as I understand it) to get more money. My rabbi specifically said that he doesn't want to see any of our pictures in the paper arguing with these guys, and I will certainly comply with that. (Absent that, it would have been tempting to have our better-educated folks specifically engage them in long conversations, specifically to take those individuals out of circulation. But I certainly see the point that this wouldn't be worth it.)

It's also safe to assume that just as we have people on their mailing lists, they have people on ours -- so they certainly have evidence that the community has been organizing educational programs in advance of their coming. Doesn't that provide fodder for their funders, too? Pity I didn't think to ask that question a couple months ago, though I assume others have asked it too.

I do wonder why converting Jews is so important to them. If the numbers I've heard are anywhere near accurate, they are spending between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars per convert. Sure, I understand the idea of "my message is important and I must get it out to people", but how high does the cost have to rise before you rethink it? I don't get it, unless maybe they think that they can get a significant return on the investment from contributions from rich Jews who join them. That sounds iffy to me, though.

I should clarify that while I have quite a bit of contempt for this particular organization, I have no problem whatsoever with declared Christians. There is not a single universally-correct religion; I'm not hostile to those who follow the others. The problem with Jews for Jesus is that they're deceitful, pretending to be Judaism with just a few minor changes. They hold "Shabbat services" led by "rabbis" in "synagogues" where they read from "torah scrolls" -- and then, while they're at it, from gospels. If I were a Christian I think I'd be pretty offended that they think they have to disguise the religion in order to get people to join -- and, I gather, many Christians do feel that way about these guys.

Comments

[cafemusique.livejournal.com]

I should clarify that while I have quite a bit of contempt for this particular organization, I have no problem whatsoever with declared Christians. There is not a single universally-correct religion; I'm not hostile to those who follow the others.

My guess* is that this is where you disagree (I mean besides the obvious)...they believe that there is a single universally-correct religion and it tells them to "Go and make disciples of all nations." That would seem to be a very common belief in that strain of Christianity which you say is backing the group.

*Big caveat: Prior to reading your post, I had heard of Jews for Jesus (i.e., I recall hearing the name), but I don't know anything about them beyond what you've said here. So anything I say about them is completely uninformed guesswork.

[cafemusique.livejournal.com]

OK...probably scratch most (if not all) of what I just said. I just read the article on the group at Wikipedia. Pretty sure that the benefit of the doubt is not appropriate in this case.

[moose]

I've always called them, "Jews who don't seem to get it."

'Deceitful' Religion

[(Anonymous)]

Hi there,

Before I begin I'll tell you that I am coming from the standpoint of a Torontonian, Ashkenazi, Male, "baal-teshuva" who has had 4 years of University education in both Psychology and Sociology. I'm not one for labels as I think they can serve to obscure reality, so if you want any more info about my own personal religiosity, then by all means ask away.

Anyway I would like to ask you what constitutes real religion. You said it yourself: "There is not a single universally-correct religion". If this is the fact then why do Jews for Jesus deserve your contempt for being deceitful? If you want to take a good relativistic perspective then you have to admit that Jews for Jesus is a religion-subtype which falls under the Judeo-Christian umbrella. If this is the case, and if people find some sort of solace in joining something Jewish with a Christian flavour, then why complain?

The only reason you would have to complain is if you truly took Judaism as a standard and anything different (but which drew from it) as non-kosher. After all, ישקה, or Jesus, was a Rabbi who was trying to teach people life lessons that fell somewhere on the outskirts of Judaism. Does Christianity lose points for coming from Judaism, from trying to attenuate the faithful Jewish population?

Now I don't know much about Jews for Jesus as an organization, but I do know that one has to organize one's attitude towards people of other faiths. If you believe in the right for people to worship/believe what they want then treat them accordingly. If you believe that the religious rights of some groups must be preserved whereas others must be quashed, then be honest with yourself. Even if you believe that your religion is the "right" one then state it and get on with your affairs.

Anyway, please don't take this as a personal affront; I thought it was an interesting point to argue.

- Inkhorn
http://intellectualization.blogspot.com

The world truly is full of ignorant chides

[siderea]

You know, this is a perfect example of why I don't allow anonymous commenting directly in my LJ. I have moderation on. Frankly, about 50% of the comments from people without accounts made in my journal I never approve to go through. Ones like this -- drive-bys from supercilious, pompous, belligerant strangers with bad reading comprehension, complete disdain not only for the facts but for the getting of facts (RTFA!), and no demonstrable respect for the expertise, authority or even just humanity of the author to whom they are responding.

Re: 'Deceitful' Religion

[moose]

Jesus was a bad little Jewish boy who didn't listen to his mother and go into his father's business.

NOOO he had to go with the guy he thought was his BIRTH father...

Re: 'Deceitful' Religion

[cellio]

I don't believe that Judaism is right for everyone. As I said, I have no problem with overt Christianity -- or Islam or Hinduism or LittleGreenMonsterInTheSkyism. But I have a big problem with lying about it.

What J4J does is to claim that they're practicing Judaism when they are not. They claim this to Jews too uninformed to know better (like immigrants), thus leading those people to violate their own religion (that is, Judaism) when they were trying to keep it. And fraud is fundamentally offensive to me; if your message is valid then you don't need to commit fraud, so what do their tactics say about their message?

By the way, this has nothing to do with keeping Jews Jewish, either. If a Jew wants to convert to Christianity (or anything else), he's free to do so. But he should do it with his eyes open.

Suppose there were a group called Canadians for Inuit, and they went around telling people that Canadian law requires that people donate 10% of their own money to support the natives who, after all, the Canadians pushed off their land. Suppose they went around to schoolyards and hung out at INS and told people this, and managed to collect this money from them. As a Canadian, would you be bothered by this? Would you feel, perhaps, that while charitable foundations for the Inuit are a fine idea, disguising it as a state tithe is not? And would this feeling diminish in any way your belief that you don't care if people are Canadian or American or French so long as they're happy? This isn't the greatest analogy, but I hope it illustrates the problem.

[sk4p.livejournal.com]

My mother's old church building (the congregation has moved into new digs) is up for sale, and apparently some J4Js were expressing interest.

I responded by saying "Ah, Christians who refuse to admit it."

[cellio]

Yup. Put a cross out front and I've got no problem with it, but they won't do that.

evangelism

[brokengoose.livejournal.com]

I do wonder why converting Jews is so important to them.

A lot of Fundamentalist Christians see their religion as the logical successor to Judaism. They see Christianity as a sort of schism within Judaism rather than a new religion that used a lot of ideas from Judaism. They think of Jews as "distant family" in the ideological sense.

Remember that Fundamentalists are mostly motivated by fear of Hell. So, the goal is to spare as many people as possible from that horrible fate in the time that they have. In an odd way, they're acting out of what they perceive as kind favoritism. Of all of the people they could be saving, they're choosing to try to save you 'cause you're "family". And, like an occasion where you're trying to save a loved one from certain disaster and they're resisting, they believe that there's no such thing as a dirty trick. They really believe that they're fooling you for your own good.

If the numbers I've heard are anywhere near accurate, they are spending between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars per convert.

All things considered, if they're going to stick with their mission, I prefer that they take as inefficient an approach as possible.

Re: evangelism

[cellio]

I wonder what the evangelicals' response to Nostra Aetate, the Catholic church's declaration that Jews have a (different) valid path to salvation, is. Do they think the church is wrong, or do grant that that's right but feel it's better to convert anyway? I'm not intimately familiar with the theological underpinnings of Nostra Aetate (I assume there are some and that it wasn't just a political move), and of course Catholics and Protestants understand theology very differently on some points, but I wouldn't have expected damnation to be one of them. Apparently it is.

Do those fundamentalists draw a distinction between "heard about Jesus and rejected" and "never considered the idea"? If they don't, they'd get the most bang for the buck by going after the billions of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc in the world instead of the millions of Jews.

All things considered, if they're going to stick with their mission, I prefer that they take as inefficient an approach as possible.

Oh, I completely agree -- I'm just boggled that they can keep it up. And while it's sad that they could be pumping thost vast sums of money into doing some good in the world instead, if they're bound and determined to throw money at trying to dupe people, I'd like them to waste as much as possible on the effort.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

I suspect they might believe that the Christ-killers have a higher chance of being damned if not converted than members of other religions do.

But, who knows.

I heard about the incoming invasion last week when I was visiting a friend in Shadyside, actually--apparently a group called "Jews for Judaism" has been going around warning people about it.

[cellio]

Higher chance of damnation: Ah, I hadn't considered that point. I wonder if that's it.

Jews for Judaism is a counter-missionary group with an origin obvious from its name, yes. Their web site has some pretty good articles, such as this assessment of the messiah's job criteria.

[sethg]

Saul, may his name be blotted outPaul of Tarsus framed Christianity as the heir to Judaism and, as Yeshiahu Leibowitz put it, the heir cannot inherit while the testator is still alive. Because of this, Jews have always had a special place in Christian culture and mythology that, say, Zoroastrians never had.

I once attended a talk that a J4J, a very Ashkenazi-looking fellow with a New York accent named Silverman, gave at MIT to other Christians on campus. (He had distinguished himself a year or two before that by giving a public lecture at which he would only accept questions from the audience in writing--and claimed that it was totally unintentional that he scheduled the talk on the eighth day of Pesach. But I digress.) At one point, he took out a guitar and announced, "This is Jewish gospel music. When you get to heaven you'll be hearing a lot of this." The audience ate it up. Rumor has it that the Boston branch is targeting Russian immigrants who are ethnically Jewish but know very little about Judaism. Is there a similar population in Pittsburgh?

[cellio]

the heir cannot inherit while the testator is still alive.

True. And there would certainly be some amount of indigation that (from their point of view) we reject "our own messiah" (sic).

Rumor has it that the Boston branch is targeting Russian immigrants who are ethnically Jewish but know very little about Judaism. Is there a similar population in Pittsburgh?

We have some of those, yes -- see mizmoose's comment below, which she intended to post as a reply to you.

[siderea]

"This is Jewish gospel music. When you get to heaven you'll be hearing a lot of this."

Yes, which raises a burning question.... So was it any good? :} Inquiring amateur ethnomusicologists want to know. And, er, what makes it "Jewish gospel"? Or was it really Christian klezmer?

Rumor has it that the Boston branch is targeting Russian immigrants who are ethnically Jewish but know very little about Judaism.

This raises a slightly more serious question. How can anyone be a Jew, know they are a Jew (leaving the kids raised crypto-jewish off the hook here), and not know about the no-Christ bit? Or put another way: Christians have only been calling Jews "Christ-killers" for about 2000 years -- how does one manage to miss that memo? I actually mean the question earnestly: what went on, in these folks culture, that would result in them not having this knowledge?

[moose]

All Ashkenazi-looking Jews with NYC accents are required by law to be named Silverman or Goldberg. I don't understand it.


There are a lot of Russian immigrants in Pittsburgh, many of who(m) were sponsored over here by relatives or synagogues before the fall of the USSR. This was especially big in the '80s -- the big synagogue at the corner of Shady & Beacon long had a huge banner up that said, "Save Soviet Jewry!"

[to which I always wanted to hang a sign under saying, "Win Valuable Prizes!" But I'm that kind of demented person. As you may have guessed....]

[moose]

er. That was supposed to be a response to the person's comment before this one, but I'm a moron! Hi!

[grouchyoldcoot.livejournal.com]

Hey, I saw two of these people on Walnut Street! I thought they were basically a joke, with the big colorful 'Jews for Jesus' t-shirts. It's hard to believe they could convince anyone of anything.

[cellio]

Nope, not a joke. In past campaigns they've gone for stealth, not wearing the t-shirts, but they've been so open about their current campaign that that wouldn't have worked. Glad they realize that too. :-)

[kmelion.livejournal.com]

My reply to someone who asked me why I don't believe in Jesus as the savior, etc, etc?

Because if I believed in Jesus, I'd be Christian, not Jewish.

J4J

[(Anonymous)]

Judaism is a monotheistic religion. It is not, and never has been, monolithic.

Back at Wash. U. (when I went there, ~70% Jewish), the debate over whether one could be a Jew and a Christian was common. I made sure there's a conservative, a reformed, and an atheist in the group and get them to define who is a Jew. The result was entertaining, although it really side-tracked the discussion. If people are going to insist on screaming at someone, I'd rather sit back and watch them scream at each other than be the group's target.

The original Christians were Jews and worshiped with other Jews (with, of course, some disagreements). They followed the Laws of Moses and celebrated the festivals as prescribed. They considered themselves Jews. Granted, among the Jews, it wasn't a particularly popular take on Judaism. Still, there were less popular variations (with, I might point out, much greater divergence in theology) that are accepted as Jewish.

The division between the two groups did become more pronounced as time went on, especially with the "Hellenization" of Christianity. Still, for many years, the religions were not as divergent as was once thought. Recent discoveries in ancient Roman catacombs point to far more contact and "cross-pollination" between Christianity and Judaism. I also suspect that certain aspects of the Seder as currently practiced may have either been introduced as a polite satire on Christian Jews or by Christian Jews -- and somehow became standard in one of those little historical quirks.

The standard rebuttals passed out at WU against the Jews for Jesus back in the '70s (it's been a while) were fascinating. The rabbi who just the week before proclaimed that Christians and Jews worshiped the same God claimed that Christianity was polytheistic. Now, the concept of the Trinity is rather complex and even questioned within Christianity. As a biochemist with a fascination with quantum mechanics, I obviously don't see it as a problem. Then again, my views on human self-awareness and the nature of reality terrify me. I keep waiting for someone at Church to ask if I believe in the three Persons of the Trinity. I wonder what sort of reaction the answer "At least" will get.

I do object to Christians (Jewish or otherwise) who do a bad job of presenting the Gospel. As G'Kar said in Babylon 5, "Do not thump the Book of G'Quan. It is disrespectful." I do not believe it is our job to convert anyone. On the other hand, if someone asks about the hope I have within me, I will answer. At that point, it's God's problem.

I don't know if it's true, but supposedly Martin Luther was horrified by the attitude his contemporaries had toward the Jews. He wrote a defense of Christianity, convinced that once the Jews read it, all would be sweetness and light as they accepted Christianity. The story goes that they didn't, and Luther (I keep wanting to spell that "Luthor" -- someone needs to quit reading so many comic books and not answer posts late at night -- or perhaps an emotinonal component is leaking through) became enraged and then advocated treatment of the Jews far worse than that which his contemporaries had been planning. I can hear my wife (the psychologist) saying "Luther had boundary issues." It was not his job to convert people, and he took the rejection rather personally.

How much of the rejection of Christianity is theologically based, and how much based on history? This question does not only apply to Jews. I fear the answer to that question is a great, great shame to Christianity.

Rob of UnSpace (http://www.unspace.net/)

Re: J4J

[sethg]

My answer to that question is here.

[aliza250.livejournal.com]

I consider Jews 4 Jesus and all the various flavors of Christianity-in-a-tallis to be an abomination. And no, I do not use that word lightly, I use it in the Biblical sense, as in "destroy on sight."

If you want to steal other people's holidays and dress them up in Christian trappings to gain converts, well, yeah, there's a long history of that, going back to the first conversions of the Roman emperors. But don't tell people that you're just "enhancing" their religion.

The people who seduce Jews into "synagogues" to pray to Jesus are lying and cheating in order to steal people's souls. There's only one Christian deity who condones such behavior, and his name is Satan.

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what the J4J's are up to these days in reality -- we live in a substantially Mormon locale, and while the Mormons try to convert Christians, the Christians don't reciprocate. We don't even have many Jehovah's Witnesses.

When I lived in Massachusetts, we had a family of folks who were J4J living next door, and they were very earnest about being the "bridge" between Judaism and Christianity. I don't remember all the arguments, but at that time (ugh. 20 years ago) they had a policy not to be actively confrontational & evangelical. I guess they need money like everyone else these days.

[madfilkentist]

I'm not particularly familiar with J4J, but my sense is that they want to recast Judaism into a form which accepts Jesus as their Messiah and adopts the evangelical view of him. I don't see that this is inherently any more or less honest than any other religious doctrine. Given that that's their aim, it makes sense that they would work with the terminology of Judaism but a theology which is Christian. It doesn't strike me as particularly hypocritical that they'd work with Christians who agree with them on just about everything.

Their website makes it quite clear what they're promoting. I don't see anything secretive about their aims.

Being neither Christian nor Jewish, I wouldn't be likely to engage them in a debate, since I accept none of the premises they argue from. But I don't see anything worse in them than in anyone else who's decided my soul needs saving.

[cellio]

Well, if they're going to claim to be a branch of Judaism, don't they need to work within Judaism's context? For example, Jewish tradition pretty clearly lays out the requirements of a messiah, and is also pretty clear about monotheism. Christianity eventually said "we disagree" and branched, which is fine. J4J seems to be taking the window-dressing but not the foundation.

My two cents...

[cecerose.livejournal.com]

The main point of your post is you despise JFJs because they presents themselves as Judaism with a Messiah. Of course the problem is, the rest of us are still waiting and don't consider it a valid form of Judaism.

There is not a single universally-correct religion; I'm not hostile to those who follow the others. The first anon. poster missed your point completely -- Judaism does teach that there is no one way to G-d; one need not to become a Jew to seek G-d.

The problem with Jews for Jesus is that they're deceitful, pretending to be Judaism with just a few minor changes. They hold "Shabbat services" led by "rabbis" in "synagogues" where they read from "torah scrolls" -- and then, while they're at it, from gospels.

This is going to sound horrifying, but I remember in highschool CYO in the mid 1980's, we actually had passover seders with pita bread. (SHUDDER) Regardless of what the Vatican may have said recently, I was taught that Catholicism was the spiritual successor to the Jewish covenant. Without Judaism there would be no Christianity; while the the opposite is true: Judaism can exist without Christianity.

Re: My two cents...

[cellio]

Of course the problem is, the rest of us are still waiting and don't consider it a valid form of Judaism.

Among many other factors, we won't worship the moshiach as a deity when he does show up. The moshiach is a political leader, a nation-builder, not the object of Temple worship.

Heh -- I just realized something. Since the moshiach must be descended from Judah -- which is to say, not Levi -- he wouldn't even be allowed into the inner court and holy of holies! If you view the moshiach as a religious leader that's kind of ironic.

This is going to sound horrifying, but I remember in highschool CYO in the mid 1980's, we actually had passover seders with pita bread. (SHUDDER)

I remember model seders in church when I was in high school. They were meant to be educational ("here's what the Jews do"); they didn't co-opt the symbols for Christian worship ("this lamb is Jesus", three matzot = trinity, etc). I can't tell which kind you experienced, but I think education is a good thing.