We haven't got to that level yet. But I will tell them that some Jews listened to the prophets, recognized Jesus and became Christians, and other Jews failed to listen to their own prophets who told them about Jesus and are in violation of the Mosaic covenant.
I did tell the older one that Mohammed tried to pass himself off as a prophet to Jews and Christians, but that he failed the test of a prophet that had been given by Moses some 2000 years earlier. Thus the Jews and the Christians who knew the scripture were able to recognize Mohammed instantly as a fraud and didn't accept him as a prophet. Whereupon Mohammed got mad and started his own religion and it's why he taught his followers not to be friends with Jews or Christians.
"What do you tell your children happens to Jews when they die?"
I will tell them the above that the Jews are in violation of their own covenant with God. I will point out the Old Testament scripture that supports and should have led the Jews to Jesus. I will explain that their rejection of Jesus is why Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 exactly as Jesus foretold. I will also tell them that God still has a plan for Israel. That Israel's coming back to be a nation again in 1947 was God's hand at work in order to fulfill the prophecies. Those prophesies include that a reborn Israel will finally accept Jesus as the Messiah 3.5 years into the reign of the Anti-Christ.
As for those Jews who rejected Jesus and won't live to be part of the above prophecy, I have very little hope. Perhaps there is some way that God can apply Jesus's sacrifice to them, since they still look to God for forgiveness even though they have rejected his plan. But I will also point out the many verses in the Bible that indicate that is not very likely. I will point out how Jesus wept over Jerusalem, that Jesus was a Jew and that God loves the Jews as He loves all of us and that it hurts Him when people reject Him and His plan.
But I will not gloss over that God is a God of Justice. And that he told us in the beginning that sin leads to death.
"We have rejected Jesus as the Messiah - does that make us all doomed to your hell? "
Well I just realized that you are Jewish. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. Either you are right and we Christians are guilty of worshiping a madman who claimed to be God. Or we Christians are right, and you failed to listen to the prophets. There is no in between.
"If so, I want nothing to do with your idea of God - my God loves all of his children so long as they live according to his basic rules of life, those being the ten commandments."
Have you read your own scriptures? God's already passed judgement. He says repeatedly in the Jewish scriptures, that "None are righteous". It's why the whole animal sacrifice system was set up. To teach you that a substitution would have to be made.
The Jewish God is a God who tried extremely hard to impress upon the Jewish people and through them the rest of the world, the importance of paying close attention to what He told you.
When David tried to move the Ark of the Covenant without following God's explicit instructions, people died. Would your God do that? He did!!! Why?
In Moses' day, when God sent serpents among Israel. Anyone who was bitten died unless they obeyed God's commandment to look at this statue of a serpent that Moses erected on a pole. Think about how bizarre that is for a minute. Not only did this God who want's no image of Himself constructed, and who is constantly fighting pagan idols, have Moses build a statue of a Serpent (the very symbol of sin), but he commanded that anyone in Israel who failed to look to it would die!!! WHY??? What was he trying to tell you??? That he would nail sin to a tree and you would have to look to it for salvation or die!
This God who is know for love and peace and gave us the commandment "Thow shalt not murder", told Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. Again how bizarre!!!! What was he trying to tell you???? That He would provide a substitute sacrifice. That He would offer His own Son.
The reason God was so severe in some of these examples is that the stakes are worse than life and death. The stakes are spiritual life and death.
I mentioned Jewish scriptures pointing to Jesus. The following website points out a few. But there are many others, that include the timing of the Messiah, his birthplace, etc.
There is no doubt in my mind that God loves you, as he does all men. But he is a terrible, terrible God to those who insist on remaining on the wrong side of Justice.
Daniel 12:2 - And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
I refuse to debate this with you because you have made up your mind and you insist on believing yourself better than all those who hold a different viewpoint. YOu are the worst of the religious right - the ones even _I_ will warn my children about, and I have the greatest respect for religion and religious people. But only those who are capable of extending that respect to others outside their little circle.