Posted on 11/19/2005 3:40:09 PM PST by Alouette
HOUSTON - The leader of the largest branch of American Judaism blasted conservative religious activists in a speech Saturday, calling them "zealots" who claim a "monopoly on God" while promoting anti-gay policies akin to Adolf Hitler's.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, said "religious right" leaders believe "unless you attend my church, accept my God and study my sacred text you cannot be a moral person."
"What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God?" he said during the movement's national assembly in Houston, which runs through Sunday.
The audience of 5,000 responded to the speech with enthusiastic applause.
Yoffie did not mention evangelical Christians directly, using the term "religious right" instead. In a separate interview, he said the phrase encompassed conservative activists of all faiths, including within the Jewish community.
He used particularly strong language to condemn conservative attitudes toward homosexuals. He said he understood that traditionalists have concluded gay marriage violates Scripture, but he said that did not justify denying legal protections to same-sex partners and their children.
"We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations," Yoffie said. "Yes, we can disagree about gay marriage. But there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry."
The Union for Reform Judaism represents about 900 synagogues in North America with an estimated membership of 1.5 million people. Of the three major streams of U.S. Judaism — Orthodox and Conservative are the others — it is the only one that sanctions gay ordination and supports civil marriage for same-gender couples.
Yoffie said liberals and conservatives share some concerns, such as the potential damage to children from violent or highly sexual TV shows and other popular media. But he said, overall, conservatives too narrowly define family values, making a "frozen embryo in a fertility clinic" more important than a child, and ignoring poverty and other social ills.
One attendee, Judy Weinman of Troy, N.Y., said she thought Yoffie was "right on target."
"He reminded us of where we have things in common and where we're different," she said.
Yoffie also urged lawmakers to model themselves on presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, who famously told a Houston clergy group in 1960 that a president should not make policy based on his religion.
On other topics, Yoffie asked Reform synagogues to do more to hold onto members, who often leave after their children go to college. He also said the Reform movement, which is among the most accepting of non-Jewish spouses, should make a greater effort to invite spouses to convert.
I do not understand the Reform Jews membership numbers:
They say they have 1.5 million members in 900 synagogues. That is an average of 1,700 members per synagogue.
Meanwhile, the Southern Baptists as an example have 17 million members in 41,000 churches or an average of 400 members per church.
The Presbyterian Church USA has an average membership of just over 200 members per church.
It certainly appears the Reformed Jews are grossly exaggerating their importance. Perhaps they only have about 250,000 members.
There is no census or actual membership count. These numbers are based on the "National Jewish Population Survey" which a phone poll of numbers dialed at random and asking the person who answers, "Are you Jewish?" If the answer is "yes" the person is asked questions about the level of observance. Reform estimates its "membership" based on the number of people whose observance is "minimal or none."
In Israel, a country of 5 million Jews, less than 5,000 are members of a Reform temple.
BTW, there are many holes in your comparison to Mohammed. Jesus fulfilled many OT prophesies. Not so with Mohammed.
I've been surprised to learn that many Jews think many Christians will go to heaven based on their keeping of God's law. How can they think we keep God's law when we worship Jesus as God's Son? It's nice, but I would think no less of them if they thought I was headed for hell. They can't send me there. I'm comfortable with my own beliefs. Let each person be true to his own faith. As for evangelism, the freedom to persuade without the power to force is all anyone needs. That gives false teachers and preachers and prophets just as many rights as true ones. So be it. We will all answer to our Maker in the end.
What is Lexington style?
I once met a young man who believed the Written Torah was from Heaven but who rejected the rest of the Bible (as well as the Oral Torah) and even rejected the doctrine of an afterlife. While he certainly was not an Orthodox Jew, I fail to see why his belief system failed to qualify as a "branch of Judaism" just as much as "reform," "reconstructionism," and "secular humanistic Judaism."
This is a due to the arrogance of the more established Jewish communities.
I read once that Orthodox Jews are projected to become the majority, but I can't remember how may years for this to take place.
So this is the leftist mouthpiece of the liberal Jews that have undermined the Jewish cause since the 60s.
Presently this leftist group is promoting ARZA (Association for Reform Zionist of America) in the upcoming national elections in Israel. The Union for Reform Judaism calls ARZA "a vote for the values which unite Reform/Progressive Jews and help to empower the growth of the Progressive Jewish Movement in Israel."
However, there are voices opposing the Israeli Reform movement. A click of my mouse found this one at the following site:
http://www.crisisisrael.com/display_commentary.php?cid=147
"The Reform movement has adopted the entire agenda of the American Left, down to and including bashing Israel for daring to defend itself. The Reform establishment is today barely distinct from the buffoons in the Tikkun-Aleph-Renewal cult of Michael Lerner and Arthur Waskow, other than the fact that they have not - yet - endorsed LSD use by Jews."
and,
"The Reform establishment opposes school choice for Jews and wants Jewish children confined to public schools; it supports every wacky idea to emerge from the most extremist environmentalist movements; it supports affirmative action quotas that discriminate against Jews; the number one item on its agenda these days is gay "marriage"; David Saperstein's comments opposing welfare reform were so outrageous that a few years back they were cited with approval by the American Communist Party newspaper. . . The Reform Establishment supports partial-birth abortion but vehemently opposes execution of convicted murderers and terrorists. It wants Israel to return to its 1949 borders with all "settlers" expelled. Reformies in Israel have led the anti-globalization hoodlums seeking to make the world safe for Marxism. . . It is not the religious parties who are responsible for the nation's self-destruction in Israel but the secularist ones, although the religious parties display cowardice in not stopping it. . .In an era when true believers in liberalism are an endangered species outside the Bay Area and Hollywood, the Reform establishment lobbies in the name of "Judaism" and "Biblical ethics" to impose its leftist political biases and lifestyle on all Jews and on the entire United States. It seeks to hijack Judaism, Jewish holidays and Jewish ethical authority on behalf of the PC fads of the liberal-Left."
Halakhically, the Jews are not so much a "religion" as a nation that has a covenant with G-d. A Jew who apostasizes to another religion is an apostate Jew and is subject to the Halakhic penalties prescribed for Jews who apostasize.
Meanwhile all non-Jews, regardless of religion or lack of it, are Halakhically Noachides, and thus any practicing Noachide who apostasizes to another religion is an apostate Noachide and subject to the Noachide penalties for apostasy.
What we both agree on is that a Jew who apostasizes to chr*stianity is not a "good Jew" or a "completed Jew" or a "true Jew" or any such thing. However, in the eyes of HaShem he remains a Jew and subject to penalties prescribed for Jews who apostasize.
This "rabbi" (and the term is used loosely) Yoffie character is just another stale, outdated, 1960s hippie leftover that just cannot seem to get his sorry-tired needle unstuck. Yada, yada, yada, same ole, same ole. Make him a gentile and he'd fit right in with any liberal Protestant or liberal Catholic group; they all say the same things. Religious Jews and Christian are all "awful people out to destroy people's rights, take over, the sky is falling, the sky is falling....." B-O-R-I-N-G!
This JINO carpetbagger needs to be seriously smacked upside his fool head with a very large, very wet fish (say a yellow-fin tuna).
This yahoo is about as representative of real Judaism as John Shelby Spong is representative of real Christianity.
Someone needs to tell this joker to go kiss their Dixie tailpipes in Hebrew or Yiddish (that is, if the idjit even knows either language).
Ooops, sorry - forgot to ping you guys! RINO JINO needs serious smack with large wet fish ping!
It sounded like that to me initially, also.
But then I remembered that according to the practers of political correctness only cretain people are capable of hate.
They are:1. Christians .
2. White non homosexuals.
3. Gun owners.
4. Conservatives Republicans.
5. Black Republicans.
If a member of any of these groups say "Good Morning" to to political correctness crowd, including the alpabet members of the Democrat propaganda arm, it is hate speech.
The other side can say anything they wish and make any threat no natter how profane or vulgar about the groups numbered above and it is "freedom of speech".
If we are going to have an America very much longer, it is time to do as a great American named Earl Pitts says, "WAKE UP AMERICA".
Yoffie's a moron. If he's a real rabbi, then I'm the King of England!
I wonder how he feels about Muslims...
He probably thinks they are a persecuted Minority, waging a Just War against the West.
Probably fubared his brain on drugs and radical pol lit when he was in college in the 60s. Still stuck in 1968. If he's a real rabbi, then I'm the next Pope after Benedict XVI!
As for you being the King of England.....I'd say you'd be a damn sight better successor to HM Elizabeth II than that no-count New Agey Muslim son of hers!
Personally, I think he's scared out of his too-tight drawers that the conservative Christians and conservative Jews will unite, and JINOs like him and his CINO counterparts will be out of business. People have a deep inner yearning for real meat and substance, and cotton candyism just doesn't cut it.
Isn't it both?
It is interesting to note that Jews for Jesus is offensive in only one direction. Anyone who truly understands Christian theology understands why that is. Christianity cannot be separated from its jewish roots. Christians who don't get that end up distorting Christianity. Jews who become Christians easily get it. Obviously it means they are renouncing Judiasm from the time of Christ's death and resurrection forward. Obviously. (Can I point out that from a Christian perspective the Judaism of the OT does not seem to be the same religion in many ways as the Judaism of today, except of course for the moral values part.) The theology of Jews for Jesus is pure Christian theology. The offense to religous Jews who do not believe Jesus is their Messiah is obvious, but the doctrine is also obvious. It's just one of those things that can't be resolved. It's not intended to be an offense but it unavoidably is and always has been. As long as it's only Gentiles, the offense is easier to overlook. But Christianity itself is really the offense. That's the bottom line,
That said, in the political world it doesn't matter. We are allies, and frankly I have grown to appreciate religious Jews more than some Christians, as Christians can sometimes commit the offense of using grace to transform God into an unholy, sin-friendly, mushy sort of diety who bows to man rather than the other way around.
Ah....thank you! That's what I was looking for! That will do nicely for smacking this Rabbi-in-Name-Only upside is pitiful-little-tired-sorry-addled-brained head!
"Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism.."
Nuff said.
The liberal Jewish establishment is to Judaism as the Methodist, Episcopalian and Presbyterian establishments are to Christianity - hogwash.
Did I say irony? Maybe we need to use a new word here: MORONY.
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