Jewish opposition
In 1993 the Task Force on Missionaries and Cults of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRCNY) issued a statement which has been endorsed by the four major Jewish denominations: Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Reform Judaism, and Reconstructionist Judaism, as well as national Jewish organizations.[8] Based on this statement, the Spiritual Deception Prevention Project at the JCRCNY stated:
On several occasions leaders of the four major Jewish movements have signed on to joint statements opposing Hebrew-Christian theology and tactics. In part they said:
"Though Hebrew Christianity claims to be a form of Judaism, it is not ... It deceptively uses the sacred symbols of Jewish observance ... as a cover to convert Jews to Christianity, a belief system antithetical to Judaism ... Hebrew Christians are in radical conflict with the communal interests and the destiny of the Jewish people. They have crossed an unbridgeable chasm by accepting another religion. Despite this separation, they continue to attempt to convert their former co-religionists."[46]The director of a counter-missionary group Torah Atlanta, Rabbi Efraim Davidson, stated that
"the Jews for Jesus use aggressive proselytizing to target disenfranchised or unaffiliated Jews, Russian immigrants and college students" and that "their techniques are manipulative, deceptive and anti-Semitic."[47]In his 1997 book The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century, Alan Dershowitz wrote: "In America, and in other nations that separate church from state, one's Jewishness is a matter of self-definition ..." but notes: "I do not mean to include former Jews who practice Christianity under the deliberately misleading name Jews for Jesus. A Jew for Jesus already has a name: a Christian."[48] However, it should be noted that Dershowitz was not speaking as a rabbinical authority, most of whom hold that a Jew who is an apostate is still a Jew.
In an interview for Beliefnet, Orthodox Rabbi Irving Greenberg, the author of For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, said:
"But I have to recognize that there are people of ill will; there are Christian missionaries who still believe that Christianity is the only valid religion. There are Jews for Jesus who use the trappings of Judaism to bring people into a religion that teaches that Judaism is finished. Jews for Jesus are worse theologically than the mainstream of Catholicism or Protestantism, which now affirm that Judaism is a valid religion. Jews for Jesus say that it is not. They use the Jewish trappings, but de facto, they are teaching the classic Christian supersessionism--that Judaism was at best a foreshadowing of Christianity".[49]The author of the book Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History David Klinghoffer expressed his concern in The Jewish Journal: "When Jews accept Jesus, they marry other Christians or their children do, thus disappearing into the Christian population."[25]
Concerning Christian-Jewish reconciliation and Christian missions to the Jews, Emil Fackenheim wrote:
"... Except in relations with Christians, the Christ of Christianity is not a Jewish issue. There simply can be no dialogue worthy of the name unless Christians accept — nay, treasure — the fact that Jews through the two millennia of Christianity have had an agenda of their own. There can be no Jewish-Christian dialogue worthy of the name unless one Christian activity is abandoned, missions to the Jews. It must be abandoned, moreover, not as a temporary strategy but in principle, as a bimillennial theological mistake. The cost of that mistake in Christian love and Jewish blood one hesitates to contemplate. ... A post-Holocaust Jew can still view Christian attempts to convert Jews as sincere and well intended. But even as such they are no longer acceptable: They have become attempts to do in one way what Hitler did in another."[50]
[edit] Outreach Judaism
Main article: Outreach Judaism
Outreach Judaism, is an international organization that responds directly to the issues raised by missionaries and cults, by exploring Judaism in contradistinction to fundamentalist Christianity.
The organization was founded by
Rabbi Tovia Singer. Rabbi Singer's program aims to provide educational resources to individuals targeted by organizations such as Jews for Jesus. As a world renowned public speaker and as one of the top counter-missionaries in the world, Rabbi Singer addresses more than 200 audiences a year. He is the author of the book and accompanying audiotape series entitled Let's Get Biblical.
[edit] Jews for Judaism
Main article: Jews for Judaism
Jews for Judaism, established by Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz in 1985, is the largest Counter-Missionary organization in existence.[51] The name Jews for Judaism is a deliberate parody of Jews for Jesus, as Jews for Jesus is one of the primary missionary organizations that Jews for Judaism was founded to counter.
http://jewsforjudaism.com/jewsforjudaismhttp://www.outreachjudaism.org/
Topic: Jews for Jesus founder Moishe Rosen dead at 78 (Read 8576 times)