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.”

I have spent a lot of time on this question with you. Obviously "Jewishness" is both. It is a religion and an ethnicity. But in the case of the Jews for Jesus, they are referring FALSELY, to their religion. They are claiming to part of the Jewish RELIGION, and not merely the Jewish ethnicity as they argue for the divinity of Christ. That is really what we are talking about here on this thread.

I think people who are interested in clear communication define their terms before they start talking. If I were the City College professor in my example (I ain't, by the way) my statement of my cultural identity in answer to the question from, say, a man from Mars of "What are you?" would be a somewhat tortured locution on the order of, "well, ethnically I am Jewish, but i do not practice that religion." I would be saying that to do a favor to my questioner so that he could have some help in "fixing" where I fit in culturally in this country. I believe very strongly that if the person in this example "got religion" even if it were a rediscovery of his Jewish faith, his answer would change, and I think that you are quite right that the logical tension between a faith and a cultural background is a communication issue. But "ethnic Jewishness" is not a permanent state, not is there even a reliable set of cultural signifiers to say what an ethnic Jew is. Especially with the degree of intermarriage and "assimilation" (another diabolically hard word to define or talk about) in the past 100 years. I can tell you that I lived in Germany for three years in the 90's, and not one person ever suspected I was Jewish unless I told them, to the extent that I heard a lot of casual anti-Semitism which they would not have said if they had known. So the best Jew spotters in the world could not tell that this blonde-haired blue eyed kid from Tennessee was 100% Jewish.

"...you compare our right to defend our children from lying deceitful pamphleteers to MUSLIM PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS?"

I never made that comparison. You're reading into my comments.

"Every Jew you take for Christ is one less Jew for Judaism."

No, every person won for Christ is one less person that will have to endure eternal separation from God. Jesus was clear that he was the only way to eternal life.

"How would you like it if I came to your door every year and tried to convince your children to leave your faith?"

Well, I would hope that I have raised them with the right biblical foundation so that they would be able to immediately recognize a false teaching when they saw it. Besides, Jews claim that they don't proselytize, so I highly doubt that would really be a concern.

What it boils down to is that we recognize Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. Given that, can you not see why Jews who have discovered that would want to share it with other Jews? Part of the joy of the gospel is the privilege of sharing it with others. While we're on the subject, I would be interested in knowing what you believe is necessary to inherit eternal life.

I would still be interested in knowing what you believe is necessary to inherit eternal life. I have never been given a clear answer by any Jew regarding this.

Take your Bible (I assume you have one) and open it to Deuteronomy, Chapter 5, verse 29 (I am using a Hebrew Tanach. The KJV may have the chapters numbered differently)

5-29. You shall ve careful to act as the Lord, your God, commanded you, you shall not stray to the right or left.
30. On the entire way that the Lord, your God, commanded you shall you go, so that you shall live and it will be good for you, and you shall prolong your days in the Land that you shall inherit.
6-1. This is the commandment, and the statutes, and the judgments that the Lord, your God, commanded to teach you, to perform in the Land into which you are crossing, to inherit it,
2. So that you will fear the Lord, your God, to observe all his statutes and commandments that I command you--you, your child, and your grandchild--all the days of your life, so that your days will be lengthened.

The repetition of "all the days of your life" and "length of days" in verse 6-2 refers to eternal life.

How is someone deemed righteous? I have also heard that the righteous does not necessarily include only Jews. Does Judaism teach that "salvation" is possible apart from keeping the Jewish law?

All Jews are expected to observe the Law. Gentiles are not obligated in the ceremonial or the ritual law but can achieve salvation by acknowledging that G-D is the creator and rulers the world and by upholding justice and morality.

"And part of the joy of being a Jew is defending Judaism from more encroachment..."

Christianity teaches the ONE WAY to eternal life. I find that worth defending. All you have done on this thread is lash out at those you view as stealing the souls of Jews. Why not defend Judaism on its merits?

"Well here's the answer to how we inherit eternal life. We observe and practice Judaism without violating one of it's basic tenets, THAT MOSHIACH HAS NOT COME YET AND THAT WE AWAIT HIS ARRIVAL.....The biggest thing we do to achieve eternal life is to we stay Jewish and one of the best ways is to stay the heck away from people like you!"

So I would have to convert to Judaism in order to inherit eternal life? What "basic tenets" of Judaism do you keep in light of the Messiah's apparent tardiness? Does not the Torah teach that justice for sin demands a blood sacrifice? Does it not also teach that the sacrifice needs to be performed in the temple? Are those still tenets of Judaism, or are they simply overlooked today for the sake of convenience?

You can stick your attitude where the sun doesn't shine, you infantile rude POC

Did I insult you? Call you names? I asked you a question about an apparent case of cognitive dissonance relating to customs of the Jews as is currently practiced. It's been my experience that people become brutish and truculent over such questions when they feel must believe but cannot reconcile that belief with reality.

Because I was reading on some of your LT material and because it did make a difference to the question, and because judging by the tone of your response, my hesitancy was justified.

What in the world does issues of identification of the lost tribes of Israel have to do with a questions of Rabbinical authority as opposed to that commanded by God? Now, if you meditated on whether to lay some bullhockey on me about the authority of men to change at their will the mandates of God, you were well justified in your hesitancy.

I asked you why you didn't answer the question. Is that a "tone"? Well, mark my "tone" now.

I have no desire to be de dragged into some disputation with someone who, based on their supercilious tone and poor taste in criticism is probably going to go on and on about the Oral law. (And how ironic that the those who contest the Oral law would find themselves in agreement on this subject with Reform Jews, those most likely to espouse left wing political causes....)

But you did respond, so you volunteer to be "dragged". The question is, if Leviticus is composed of commandments of God, how does Rabbinical authority cahnge it? Lest we forget the original question to you was, "Was not the Old Testament practices and prohibitions in Leviticus written by man according to Hebrew custom? And if they were ordained by God by being therein, how do Rabbinic authorities change them?"

And lest we forget further that it was in response to your response to my post to another poster supporting the spirit of your comments made to him.

Can you resolve the apparent conflict of God's mandates and man's laws and customs implied by the subject of the question? You give people to believe that the Jewish people follow direct commandments of God. Rabbis are not God; they have neither the wisdom nor the forsight beyond the normal blinders installed by the lusts, prejudices and fears of any other men. Regardless of how much you respect them.

At the risk of prodding you on, if it's the JEWISH covenant (and please don't waste my time about "jewish" vs. Hebrews etc) then I have no problem, as long as they can either prove matrilineal descent or want to convert back through Normative Traditional Judaism. Otherwise, you can have them for Christ, or Allah, or Eric the Red or whoever.

Jewish covenant? God made His covenant with the tribe of Judah only, even before there were any Israelite tribes at all? This I should waste your time explaining? Why do you not already know it? It's not even historical; it's common sense.

Matrilineal descent? Is that custom a mandate from God or men?

I made a mistake in not originally noting that as part of my observance, even when I cut and paste as I am doing here, it is part of my tradition to not spell out the available name of G-d, as some Rabbis who I respect have taught that even in cyber space (especially with the possibility that someone could print out the text) Orthodox Jews go to great lengths not to desecrate G-d's name. I would have thought with your great erudition about Judaism that you were aware of the issue, but again, I should have noted the that the changes were mine; it might have been misleading if someone thought you were following Orthodox tradition:

Is not spelling out God's name His commandment, or another of man's? But OK, I'll play along. If you can't handle the prospect of a Rabbi telling you that you will go to Hell for spelling out God's name, howabout you replace the "o" with a "-" in my posts reproduced back to me and I'll replace the "-" with an "o" in the reproductions of your posts back to you.

I don't ask for an appology; I ask for a deal. I do ask that you try to maintain oversight of your fears and prejudices for the purpose of having a civil conversation, if you want to post comments to me.

If you don't want to discuss a topic, don't bring it up, or, if brought up by another, don't respond. By initiating comments or responding to those made by others, you void your position of reluctance, like when going to war to kill others somone voids their right to keep their own life safe from assault.

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