Portland Jews Brace for Assault by 'Jews for Jesus' (anti-Christian Bigotry Alert!)

Portland’s Jewish community has mobilized to resist a two-week assault by Jews for Jesus who will unleash a sizeable squad of trained proselytizers on the city at the beginning of June. A former Eugene rabbi who now specializes in combating Jews for Jesus returned to Oregon May 7 and 8 to help the Jewish community here prepare for the assault. The campaign is planned to coincide with the annual Portland Rose Festival when thousands of people will be on the streets and accessible by pamphleteers.

Rabbi Efraim Davidson is the director of Torah Atlanta, a counter-missionary group that serves the southeast United States. Davidson, who lives in Atlanta now, was a founder and the spiritual leader of Congregation Ahavas Torah in Eugene.

The Jewish Federation of Portland and its Community Relations Committee have been aware for several months of JFJ plans to bring their crusade here now to take advantage of the large public gatherings that will occur during the Rose Festival.

Davidson said that the Portland campaign is part of a JFJ five-year program called “Behold Your God.” He has confronted similar JFJ campaigns in other cities, including Tampa, Fla., and Atlanta.

“Behold Your God,” is, according to Davidson, “a very well coordinated, multi-million-dollar campaign” focusing on 66 cities worldwide with Jewish populations of 25,000 or more.

He said that the Jews for Jesus use aggressive proselytizing to target disenfranchised or unaffiliated Jews, Russian immigrants and college students. He said their techniques are manipulative, deceptive and anti-Semitic.

Jews for Jesus have had some success in recent years. Davidson cited figures that show the group has grown from a mere seven U.S. congregations in 1975 to 478 today. There already are at least five so-called messianic congregations in Portland, according to the Web site www.missionportland.org, although Davidson identifies only three messianic congregations here.

Davidson added that in 1973 there were an estimated 10,000 born Jews in the United States who were practicing Christians. Today, 29 years later, he put that figure at about 250,000.

Davidson said the JFJ typically names a coordinator for a particular city that is part of its campaign plan. That person, who he identified as Sue Pearlman in Portland, does the groundwork for the upcoming campaign.

That groundwork includes, said Davidson, “hooking up with a messianic congregation and using it as the physical base for training.”

The coordinator also usually contacts local Baptist churches to recruit lay Christian volunteers. Davidson said the JFJ relies on the Baptists because they are “very motivated evangelicals.”

Help me understand something here. If a Jew is an atheist, he's still referred to as being a Jew. How is it that if a Jew becomes a Christian he then becomes "non-Jewish?" I'm differentiating between the Jewish faith and the Jewish ethnicity.

Does the Messianic Jew give up his ethnicity, too?

Maybe I have it wrong. I don't know. But this is just how conservative blacks are treated by other blacks. Somehow, according to them at least, being a conservative erases "blackness." How does being Christian erase the ethnicity of being Jewish?

I have a hard time with that one.

In the phrase Jews for Jesus they are referring to their faith, and I believe the fact that this group makes a show of observing certain Jewish rituals, yet accepting the divinity of Jesus shows that they are trying to blur the distinction between these two religions. But the distinction in fact is clear, and it is fundamentally the question of whether Rabbi Joshua ben Joseph of Nazareth a.k.a. Jesus Christ was the Messiah or not. Its a yes or no question, and the yes answer means you are a Christian, ipso facto.

As for "Jewish ethnicity" it is a vague enough term. I think people use that term as a "weak form" cultural signifier. In other words if you have no particular cultural identity other then "American" or "New Yorker", but you want to give someone a clue of where you fit in to the American Pageant, it can help them, even if you are an Atheist to say that, "my granparents were Lutheran farmers in Minnesota" or "my grandparents were Russian Jews." It tells people some clues about where you are coming from culturally. If I had to state the "ethnicity" of a Jew for Jesus whose grandparents were Russian Jews, I would say "He was born Jewish, but he joined a cult."

How does being Christian erase the ethnicity of being Jewish?

I have a hard time with that one.

You bring up a good point. Of course there are plenty of people who are ethnically (or "racially") and halachiclly (according to Torah law) Jewish because there was a Jewish woman somewhere down the female ancestral path. They might not even know it, but they are still Jews. But there is more to being Jewish than DNA. There is a religion called "Judaism" which "(racial) Jews for Jesus" do not practice or believe in.

If the "Jews for Jesus" could actually trace their ancestry in an unbroken progression all the way back to the days of Jesus himself, meticulous observing all the laws of Judaism and also Christianity, then they could legitimately claim to be a "Jewish sect." However, they are a gentile missionary society that targets the assimilated and the religiously illiterate. They have no schools or seminaries of their own, they get all their training from Christian evangelical institutions.

Huh? So, I was born black, but have joined a political "cult?" This sounds very similar to what you are saying.

I don't get it.

But there is more to being Jewish than DNA. There is a religion called "Judaism" which "(racial) Jews for Jesus" do not practice or believe in.

I thought I was specifically differentiating between the Jewish religion and the Jewish ethnicity. I could be wrong, but I thought that the one doesn't necessarily follow the other.

For instance, Sammy Davis, Jr. became a Jew. Therefore, was he in fact Jewish, or did that not count?

let me try again then. If a college professor at City College whose grandfather was Mordechai Abramowicz from Lvov, but who himself had never set foot in a synagogue was asked by a surfer girl from California, "What are you?" he could say, "Perhaps you have never seen a Jew before, they often look somewhat like me." Or if he placed a personal ad in New York magazine, and he wanted to state what "type" of person he was, or to warn off people who might not be attracted to a Jewish City College professor, he could say in the personal ad "non-observant Jew". It would give people at least a vague clue of who he was and what he was like.

On the other hand, if this same professor one day accepted Jesus as his Savior and became a new-born holy roller Christian, that would become his primary cultural identity. People who went on a blind date with him would be hearing about the word of God, and not about whatever it is that City College professors talk about. In other words, if he wanted to advertise in the personals and give someone a sense of who he was, his strongest cultural signifier would be "Christian" regardless of what Mordechai of Lvov thought about it all. I don't think he would call himself a Jew anymore in any context. Of course if he went on to win a Nobel Prize, the Jews would be winking at eachother, but that is a different story.

On the other hand, if this same professor one day accepted Jesus as his Savior and became a new-born holy roller Christian, that would become his primary cultural identity.

That was an unwarranted, unappreciated jab at my faith. Watch it. It's not "new-born." It's "born again."

Have I disrespected the Jewish faith? I think not. Nor will I under any circumstance. I ask for the same respect.

Also, there is no such thing as a Christian culture.

Lastly, I haven't seen anything yet that disproves me, but, either you are ethnically Jewish or you are not. It's like being "a little bit pregnant." You either are or are not. And if you wish to deny the Jewishness of a Jew who professes faith in Jesus, how is that not blatant bigotry?

I apologize profusely, I certainly didn't mean any disrespect. In the case of the "born again" I really did not know that term would be used to describe a convert. And "holy roller" is a term in common parlance which I did not intend to cause offense. Please accept my sincere apologies, honestly.

In your last paragraph I think I now see your confusion. You want Jewishness to be a "race." It is not, it is a religion first and foremost. I would call Sammy Davis Jr. a Jew without any reservations, and the CCNY professor who converts to Christianity is not a Jew. His grandparents might have been, but he is not. Jewishness really is not a "race", even as vague as that term is. Jews have certain cultural characteristics that serve to group them, which is why the "ethically" Jewish term is useful in conversation, but there is no way that there is a Jewish race.

"I'd tell them the same thing I tell Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and the Nation of Islam: No, thank you ... "

That is fair enough, but it does not quite address the situation which Alouette writes of. Everyone has the right to spout their views, and we are constantly confronted with people saying - look at me, this is what I believe. But some of these evengelisation efforts are not like that, their key tactic is deception.

They introduce themselves as Jews, which gives them certain rights to another Jewish believer. Also, they make a practice of identifying people who are at a time of crisis in their lives, and offering help to people addicted to substances, abused wives etc. But this is a cloak for introducing a different religion. It is very insidious. I knew of a women (in a internet list) who had been converted in her youth from Judaism to Christianity, by a man who was living in the Jewish community in Jerusalem, and posing as an Orthodox Jew. Having being brought into the religion by such tactics, she seemed to have double-vision on everything, hesitated always between being a Christian or returning to Judaism, and seemed a most unhappy soul.

In this thread it has been suggested that the Jews for Jesus should go out and covert Muslims and Catholics. Catholics are already Christians. I have noticed, myself, that many of these cross-over Jewish/Christian groups are very sectarian, and have a most hostile attitude to the older established churches. This does not recommend them to anyone with a thoughtful interest in Christianity.

Freedom of religion is important, and I don't advocate censorship. But it is fair to comment on underhand tactics. I sometimes wonder if some of these groups are not in that prophecy by St John the Divine: "I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan." (Revelation 2:9)

For instance, Sammy Davis, Jr. became a Jew. Therefore, was he in fact Jewish, or did that not count?

Conversion to Judaism is certainly possible, although Sammy Davis is probably not a good example. The Black Israelis of Dimona are probably a better example. They were originally African-American Christians who converted to Judaism en masse and moved to Israel in the 1970's. There was some controversy about the validity of the Reform or Conservative conversions they allegedly had, and they were required to convert again, each one individually, in order to conform to halachah.

Probably the most striking interracial pair I ever saw in my life were "Ovadya" and "Ruth" an ultra-Orthodox couple in Jerusalem. He was a very black African-American, she was a very blonde, blue-eyed Scandinavian. Both were converts. All their offspring, of course, are Jews.

Jews who convert to another religion (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Scientology, whatever) do not lose their ethnicity, but they are not perpetuating their identity as Jews. If they should decide at some future time to resume their ancestral faith, they are not required to re-convert.

"Jews for Jesus" is a Christian missionary society that targets Jews. It is not a denomination or a sect of Judaism, no matter how many illiterates with a Jewish grandmother it signs up. They have no schools or seminaries of their own and no doctrine other than mainline Protestant Evangelical Christianity. All their preachers (who are NOT rabbis) are trained at Christian theological institutions.

Interesting article about the "Jews for Jesus" written in 1849 when they were known as the "Society For Meliorating the Condition of the Jews."

Does that make sense?

"Was not the Old Testament practices and prohibitions in Leviticus written by man according to Hebrew custom? "

No.

Then what?

"And if they were ordained by God by being therein, how do Rabbinic authorities change them? "

Did you mean "OR if they were ordained by God by being therein, how do Rabbinic authorities change them? "

"And" or "Or" makes no difference to the question. Let's just say "if they were ordained by God by being therein, how do Rabbinic authorities change them?"

Why did you not answer the question?

(note to self - why am I engaging in a disputation with a Lost Tribe acolyte on a thread about the coercive garbage of jfj?)

Since you bring it up, you never responded to my question, what is so threatening to you about the prospect of having millions of brothers and sisters in the covenant of Abraham?

(One request, please. You may have a hangup about God not wanting people to spell out His name, but I don't. You don't change the spelling in my posts and I won't change it in your's. If you have a problem in seeing God's name spelled in my posts, get over it.)

Saying that Jews must accept Jesus now or go to hell is also religious bigotry and totally against what the bible says about it. Romans 11:26 And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: Whip out your Strong's concordance and look it up. There are many more scriptures to prove my point.

Please read John chapter 3. Understand who Christ is talking to - Nicodemus, the mopst religous of the most religous, a member of the ruling council. Christ told him, I tell YOU, NO ONE can see the kingdon of God without being reborn ... YOU must be born again.

Next, the question, what's wrong with "Jews for Jesus." Well, if you believe in "truth in advertising," see my first paragraph. Historically, as bad as every calamity that befell Jews were, the greatest danger to the continuation of the Jewish faith is intermarriage and integration into "secular society" (there's a word for it, but I just can't come up with it right now). This is a major point that is mentioned in the Bible (which the white supremecists use for decrying interracial marriage).

I believe you mean the phrase "unequally yoked" which is mentioned in II Corinthians chapter 6 and refers to a matter of faith and not a matter of race.
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? - verse 14 (NIV)

You want Jewishness to be a "race." It is not, it is a religion first and foremost.

I understand your statement about it being a religion "first and foremost," but I in no way intended to intimate that it's a racial thing. I don't believe that at all. What I'm speaking towards is the ethnicity of being Jewish. And, of course, ethnicity can encompass all races at once yet remain a true ethnicity.

I would call Sammy Davis Jr. a Jew without any reservations, and the CCNY professor who converts to Christianity is not a Jew. His grandparents might have been, but he is not.

As for the City College professor no longer being of the Jewish faith is correct. But that does not speak towards the professor's ethnicity, which would still be Jewish.

So the fulcrum of your argument is the Jewish faith. But this totally leaves out the ethnic composition which is also valid, is it not? Also, since the Jewish faith is your sticking point, is a Jew who is an atheist still a Jew?

It's very circular in my mind.

And their children are a lovely shade of brown, I'm sure. Interracial children always have looked good to me for some reason.

Jews who convert to another religion (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Scientology, whatever) do not lose their ethnicity, but they are not perpetuating their identity as Jews.

Right. They wouldn't be perpetuating the Jewish faith, but they can indeed perpetuate the Jewish ethnicity, no?

Does that make sense?

Yes it does. I just wanted to ensure that we were all viewing this from the same reference point. That's why I puzzled over "erasing" of Jewish ethnicity which is inbred. I figure that an ethnically Jewish person could no more erase his or her ethnicity than I can erase my skin color. Just can't happen.

Freedom of religion is important, and I don't advocate censorship. But it is fair to comment on underhand tactics. I sometimes wonder if some of these groups are not in that prophecy by St John the Divine: "I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan." (Revelation 2:9)

Oh, don't get me started on these types. They say they are this, they say they are that. But they are nothing more than Satan himself.

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