I was shocked," he continues. "I was born a Jew and I want to be a Jew and I am not interested in converting away from Judaism. It is horrible when you think you have friends and then you find out that they are actually your enemies."
This remark is pretty sad from this Youth, Palestinians are your enemies not the Christians....
It doesn't make sense that the law exists at all. In a democracy let people have access to information (in this case the New Testament) and let them decide for themselves what to believe. The best defense against the spread of Christianity among Israeli youth would be for the Jewish leaders to actually refute the claims made by Christians. Or maybe their inability to refute the Christian message is reason for the law?
Where can we send contributions to missionary groups like Jamm?
Sounds like my church. We fully embrace the Jewishness of our faith.
I guess I'm a Messianic gentile.
Taking a break from visiting my family in Kfar Saba, I took a stroll downtown to fetch a Jeruslaem Post. Hiking up the hill (everything is a hill in Israel, it's amazing there is soccer at all), I came upon two tables, setting on the sidewalk in a way yhat blocked all pedestrian traffic. A couple of bearded, burly unemployed linebackers in flowing tzitzit fixed their eyes on me and rushed me, demanding something unintelligible from me. I thought they wanted money, but then one of them started gesticulating, running his finger round and round his most impressive forearm. He was definitely not smiling. His partner yelled something at me in Hebrew. I caught the word "tefilin."
I said "No thank you" in English.
Mr. Forearms badgered me some more in Hebrew and then, as if he had been struck out of the blue, cocked his head and asked, "Are you Jewish?"
"No, I'm not," I replied.
Without a word he turned on his heel, headed straight for a bent-over elderly man and began his spiel again. Making my escape, I deftly I stepped around the table and out onto Wiezmann Street where a Toyota blasted me with his horn, and almost made a hood ornament out of me.
I stopped reading at this point.
I never realized Israel had such horrible laws.
The Jamm (Jerusalem Artists, Musicians and Media) Center has been trapping Jewish teens in its messianic web since it was established in 1998.
"Trapping teens in its web", huh? This is journalism?
When I was still in grade school, I went to a private Jewish day school. While all the other kids in the neighborhood got home from school at about 3:00PM, because our school went late, I never got home before 4:30. So, I usually missed out on a lot of the "play time" that the neighborhood kids got to partake in. There was a family down the street who built an add-on to their house with a small, indoor basketball court, air hockey and foosball tables... Pretty much a little youth center. It turns out that he was a minister, and was starting up a youth group. As the only Jewish kid in my neighborhood, I saw all of my friends being invited to go there and play after school and weekends. It was lonely not being invited to play. Well, one day when I got home from school, some friends were there waiting for me and wanted me to come on over. I was really happy to be invited in, and we played for about a week. After that I was told that I could continue to come and play with my friends at the house, but I was told that I would have to study and participate in prayer sessions. I asked them what I was supposed to study, and I told them that I prayed every day at school. They informed me that I needed to accept Jesus as my savior, and if I didn't that I was going to hell. Well, that really didn't sit too well with me, so I never went back.
So, in a way, they "lured me in" using my loneliness as a tool. They made no bones about the fact that they wanted me to convert to Christianity, there was nothing about being a "Messianic Jew." I think that it was wrong to try to proselytize (sp?) a preteen kid, which is exactly what these people were doing. When I mentioned this to my mother, she was furious about it. To put it bluntly, she felt that the minister was trying to usurp her authority over the way I was being raised.
Many years later, I worked at a small company where the owners were "born again" and they had frequent prayer groups at their home (which was where their office was as well). When they would meet for their prayer meetings, I would keep working, out of the way, in the basement. Shortly after my mother died, they made a point to invite me to their prayer meetings, and I politely declined. Soon, they were inviting converted Jews over to their meetings, and made a point to invite me up to meet them, and while I was polite, I made it clear that I really wasn't interested in discussing religion with them: I was only there to work. After a few weeks of this every day, I started getting pretty testy about it, and asked them to leave me alone. They didn't, and I wound up quitting.
I have no problem with people trying to convert adults, but they should leave children alone, and if you ask to be left alone, they should respect that.
Please remember, that while I have no doubt that when you try to bring someone "to The Lord," you're trying to do so from the best intentions, remember that they do not share the same beliefs, and as such, don't necessarily recognize that you're just trying to help them, any more than if a Muslim or Hindu were trying to convert them.
Mark
If Jews and Muslems numbers were reversed, would Jews be the Religion of Peace and the poor Muslims be the downtrodden friends of the USA ?
And they shouldn't start -- unless they want to emulate the Saudis, Iranians, Syrians and the authoritarian Muslim world in general.
Can you imagine if some Muslims opened a "youth club" in your neighborhood, but kept their religion a secret for the first few months(!) that teens attended their club, and then tried to convert them? Wouldn't you be mad as heck?