Jews for Jesus

Jews for Jesus is religious organization based in San Francisco, California, whose goal is to convince Jews that Jesus is the Messiah and God. It also promotes awareness of the Jewish roots and heritage of the Christian faith to non-Jewish Christians. While Jews for Jesus says that its followers are "living out their Jewishness" and self-identifies as Jewish, all Jewish denominations,Jewish groups, national Jewish organizations, the State of Israel, and many others disagree and regard the group as Christian.

Beliefs

A summary of Jews for Jesus' beliefs, according to an article on Jews for Jesus by B. Robinson of Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance,

Their doctrinal statement is basically indistinguishable from Evangelical and other conservative Christian groups. It includes the following beliefs:

• in the divine inspiration and inerrancy of the Old and New Testaments, as originally written.
• God the creator exists as a Trinity, is perfect, all wise, all powerful and all loving.
• Jesus is the Messiah, the second person of the Trinity, was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died for the sins of all humanity, rose again, and is co-equal with God. Jesus will return to earth in the near future.
• People are saved through a belief in Jesus as savior and an acknowledgment of their sins; not by their achievements.
• Heaven is a reward for those who are saved; Hell is a place of "everlasting conscious punishment" for the vast majority of humanity.

They differ from some Evangelical Christian groups in their belief that Israel continues to exist as a chosen people. They also integrate some Jewish customs and use Hebrew and Yiddish in some literature.

Core values

Jews for Jesus describes its core values in the following way:

We commit to: Direct Jewish evangelism as our priority An apostolic lifestyle of availability, vulnerability and mobility Striving for excellence in all that we do Deploying only front-line missionaries who are Jewish or married to Jews Principle-based operations and practice Accountability to our mission family and the body of Messiah Integrity and faithfulness Creativity in our staff Stepping out in courageous faith and taking risks for God.

Understanding that we: are under the authority of God and His word desire to honor Messiah Y'shua and are dependent upon the enabling power of the Holy Spirit

Leadership, funding and outreach

The organization was founded under the name Hineni Ministries in 1973 by Moishe Rosen, an ordained Baptist minister who was born Jewish but converted to Christianity at 17. Rosen remained its executive director until May of 1996 when he was replaced by David Brickner, who, though having some Jewish ancestry, is not Jewish according to Jewish Law.

The group's financial support largely comes from a variety of Christian churches, "a number of Bible schools, and individual Christian donations..." It has "a full-time staff of 150 employees running branch offices in nine cities across the United States. There are also branch offices in Australia, Brazil, Canada (Montreal, Toronto), France, Germany, Israel, Russia, South Africa, United Kingdom, Ukraine (Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Kiev, Odessa). In addition to English language, the group runs websites in Hungarian, Persian, Italian, Spanish, and Korean languages.

According to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, the group's total income in FY 2005 was $17,523,386.

Aims and organization

Jews for Jesus' official mission statement is "to make the Messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to our Jewish people worldwide." They claim that belief in Jesus as Messiah is a fulfillment of the prophecies of Hebrew scripture. Rosen argues that Christianity is the fulfillment of scriptures. Through media advertisements, production and distribution of literature, producing music and organizing person-to-person evangelism, the organization asserts that "a specifically Jewish mission" is necessary, as "Jewish people tend to dismiss evangelistic methods and materials that are couched in Christian lingo, because they reinforce the assumption that Jesus is for 'them' not 'us.'"

Jews for Jesus also seeks to educate non-Jewish Christians regarding Jewish culture and beliefs, and especially the Jewish heritage of the Christian faith. Their website contains brief descriptions of Jewish festivals, and also runs programs for non-Jewish Christians explaining the significance of Passover, Tabernacles and Hannukkah, explaining messianic elements and how they believe they are related to Jesus.

Methods of evangelizing

Large mailings and pamphleteering are the main methods used by Jews for Jesus. The organization uses colorful pamphlets and T-shirts to get their message across and is known for targeting vulnerable populations of Jews, such as immigrants, college students, senior citizens and interfaith couples. Evangelists are trained to recite phrases from the Hebrew Bible and to use Yiddish words in order to convince potential converts that Jews for Jesus maintain Jewish traditions.

Membership

Statistics of membership numbers for the Jews for Jesus movement are not known. Since those born as gentiles are active in the movement, having established it and continue to fund it, the true number of people who are known to have been born Jewish and have become full-fledged members of the movement is unknown.

Stan Telchin, formerly associated with Jews for Jesus, wrote in Messianic Judaism is not Christianity:A Loving Call to Unity that 80 percent of those who attend Messianic Synagogues are not Jewish. An official figure quoted to counter it pegged the number at 50 percent.

Opposition and criticism

Jewish opposition

All mainstream Jewish groups oppose Jews for Jesus and many see its proselytizing activities as a thinly-veiled attack on Judaism.

In 1993, the Task Force on Missionaries and Cults of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRCNY) issued a statement which has been endorsed by the four major Jewish denominations: Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Reform Judaism, and Reconstructionist Judaism, as well as national Jewish organizations. Based on this statement, the Spiritual Deception Prevention Project at the JCRCNY stated:

On several occasions leaders of the four major Jewish movements have signed on to joint statements opposing Hebrew-Christian theology and tactics. In part they said: "Though Hebrew Christianity claims to be a form of Judaism, it is not ... It deceptively uses the sacred symbols of Jewish observance ... as a cover to convert Jews to Christianity, a belief system antithetical to Judaism ... Hebrew Christians are in radical conflict with the communal interests and the destiny of the Jewish people. They have crossed an unbridgeable chasm by accepting another religion. Despite this separation, they continue to attempt to convert their former co-religionists."

The director of a counter-missionary group Torah Atlanta Rabbi Efraim Davidson stated that the Jews for Jesus use aggressive proselytizing to target disenfranchised or unaffiliated Jews, Russian immigrants and college students and that their techniques are manipulative, deceptive and anti-Semitic.

In his 1997 book The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century Alan Dershowitz wrote: "In America, and in other nations that separate church from state, one's Jewishness is a matter of self-definition ..." but notes: "I do not mean to include former Jews who practice Christianity under the deliberately misleading name Jews for Jesus. A Jew for Jesus already has a name: a Christian."

The author of the book Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History David Klinghoffer expressed his concern in The Jewish Journal: "When Jews accept Jesus, they marry other Christians or their children do, thus disappearing into the Christian population."

One of the most important Jewish principles of faith is the belief in one God and one God only with no partnership of any kind, and all mainstream Jewish organizations and denominations therefore consider it impossible to profess Judaism and also believe in the divinity of Jesus. In his book A History of the Jews, Paul Johnson describes the schism between Jews and Christians caused by a divergence from this principle:

To the question, Was Jesus God or man?, the Christians therefore answered: both. After 70 AD, their answer was unanimous and increasingly emphatic. This made a complete breach with Judaism inevitable.

Jews for Jesus believes it is entirely compatible with the view of God presented in Jewish scriptures. Jews for Jesus believe that the doctrine of the Trinity, fundamental to the Christian faith, is not entirely alien to Judaism: "While it is true that the Old Testament portion of Scripture does not present as clear a picture of the three-in-one/one-as-three Godhead, there are indications of the plurality of the Godhead in the Hebrew Scriptures."

According to Rabbinic Judaism, these "indications" are based on mistranslations and the vision of God as a compound unity is a deviation from monotheism and therefore is rejected.

America's Religions. An Educator's Guide to Beliefs and Practices contains "[a] note about Jews for Jesus, Messianic Jews, Hebrew Christians, and similar groups: Jews in these groups who have converted to Christianity but continue to observe various Jewish practices are no longer considered part of the Jewish community in the usual sense."

Christian opposition

Some Christian churches see Jewish religious practice as valid in and of itself and thus object to evangelizing Jews.

The Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, an umbrella organization that includes Muslims, Jews, and church groups from the Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches, has condemned Jews for Jesus as promoting activities "harmful to the spirit of interreligious respect and tolerance." The conference is also opposed to religious proselytizing in general. The conference also denounces the group's "deceptive proselytizing efforts", stating that when practiced on "vulnerable populations" such as the young or the elderly, these efforts are "tantamount to coerced conversions." The Rev. Clark Lobenstine, a Presbyterian (PCUSA) minister and executive director of the Conference, has stated that his group condemns Jews for Jesus and other messianic Jewish groups by name because they "go beyond the bounds of appropriate and ethically based religious outreach." Rick Ross, a self-declared "cult expert", has been critical of the organization as well and has included them on his website.

The Board of Governors of The Long Island Council of Churches, a group that is opposed to proselytizing of Jews in general, voiced similar sentiments in a statement that "noted with alarm" the "subterfuge and dishonesty" inherent in the "mixing [of] religious symbols in ways which distort their essential meaning", and named Jews for Jesus as one of the three groups about whom such behavior was alleged.

Roman Catholic leaders have also spoken out against singling out Jews for conversion. In August 2002, the U.S. Bishops Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious affairs declared that the "evangelizing task no longer includes the wish to absorb the Jewish faith into Christianity and so end the distinctive witness of Jews to God in human history. Thus, while the Catholic Church regards the saving act of Christ as central to the process of human salvation for all, it also acknowledges that Jews already dwell in a saving covenant with God. ... The distinctive Jewish witness must be sustained if Catholics and Jews are truly to be, as Pope John Paul II has envisioned, “a blessing to one another.”" The Pope spoke out against targeting Jews for conversion in 1996.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with Jewry, stated in November 2002: "This does not mean that Jews in order to be saved have to become Christians; if they follow their own conscience and believe in God’s promises as they understand them in their religious tradition, they are in line with God’s plan, which for us came to its historical completion in Jesus Christ."

Christian denominations that have issued statements criticizing evangelism of Jews include the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church USA, which said in 1988 that Jews have their own covenant with God.

Support

Jews for Jesus defends its actions against these charges, stating:

"If a person believes the Bible and believes that Jesus is the only way of salvation (John 14:6, Acts 4:12, Romans 10:9,10) and then that person declines to tell a Jewish friend about Christ, it indicates one of two things. Either that person has decided that the Jews are not worthy of the gospel, in which case he would be a racist, an anti-Semite and a hater of people instead of the lover of people that God wants him to be. Or perhaps he has judged the gospel as being unworthy of the Jews in which case he has trivialized the passion of Calvary and the awesome significance of Christ's resurrection."

Jews for Jesus is a member of numerous evangelical Christian groups: The World Evangelical Alliance, Canadian Council for Christian Charities, Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association, Evangelical Alliance of Great Britain, National Association of Evangelicals, Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism, the Internet Evangelism Coalition, and the World Evangelical Fellowship, and the Evangelical Alliance of South Africa.

Jews for Jesus also notes the lack of consensus on many issues in Judaism, and claims that due to the seemingly unusual assuredness of most Jewish groups that Jews for Jesus' beliefs are incompatible with Judaism, that this represents a double standard.

Litigations

1987 - Jews for Jesus sues for freedom of speech

The United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jews for Jesus in a 1987 suit it filed against the municipal agency in charge of Los Angeles International Airport that had barred the group from distributing leaflets at the airport as part of a larger ban on what they described as "First Amendment activities." Jews for Jesus challenged the airport's right to institute such a sweeping ban.

1992 - Jews for Jesus sues for civil rights violations

In 1992 New York Supreme Court ruled against Jews for Jesus in a suit the organization brought against the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRCNY), an umbrella group representing 60 Jewish agencies in the metropolitan New York area. The case addressed the JCRCNY's 1985 warning to Long Island rabbis that Jews for Jesus was seeking a venue to conduct a Passover seder. Jews for Jesus sued the JCRCNY for violating its civil rights; the decision upheld a lower court ruling that the JCRCNY communication did not "go beyond the proposal stage" and that there was no evidence that any of the Long Island rabbis had actually contacted establishments for the purpose of discriminating against Jews for Jesus.

In a 1992 lawsuit brought by Jews for Jesus against the JCRCNY, a United States Court of Appeals ruled that the efforts of the JCRCNY urging Jewish organizations not to patronize a New York country club because it allowed Jews for Jesus to hold its annual convention on its premises were not protected as an exercise of the JCRC's First Amendment rights.

1993 - Israel refuses citizenship to couple affiliated with Jews for Jesus

In 1993 the Supreme Court of Israel, in a case involving a couple affiliated with Jews for Jesus, ruled that Jews who adhere to the Christian beliefs are regarded by Israeli law as "members of a different faith," and are not eligible for the automatic citizenship that Israel grants Jews. In its summary of the ruling, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the belief that Jesus is the Messiah "cannot be reconciled with Judaism" and "marks the clear separation between Judaism and Christianity."

1998 and 2005 - Misuse of Jews for Jesus name online

Jews for Jesus has been involved in litigation regarding Internet use of its name. In 1998 they sued Steven Brodsky for cybersquatting for registering the domain name jewsforjesus.org to use for a site criticizing the organization; the domain now belongs to Jews for Jesus and is used for their main site.

In 2005 Jews for Jesus sued Google for allowing a Blogspot user to put up a site at the third-level subdomain jewsforjesus.blogspot.com. That lawsuit appears to have settled, as the blog now is operated by Jews for Jesus.

2006 - Jewish comedian sues Jews for Jesus for misusing his name

In 2006, comedian and actor Jackie Mason filed a lawsuit against Jews for Jesus, alleging that they unlawfully distributed a pamphlet which used his name and likeness in a way that suggested he was a member of the group. In fact, Mason is a member of the Jewish faith and not associated with Jews for Jesus. Jews for Jesus has issued a detailed response to the allegation on their website.

See also

• Who is a Jew?
• Jews for Judaism
• Messianic Judaism
• Jewish Messiah
• Jewish view of Jesus
• Christian-Jewish reconciliation
• Comparing and contrasting Judaism and Christianity
• Cognitive dissonance
• Anti-Judaism
• Supersessionism
• Dispensationalism
• History of anti-Semitism
• Repentance in Judaism

Further reading

• Sentenced for Life: A Story of an Entry and an Exit into the World of Fundamentalist Christianity and Jews for Jesus by Jo Ann Schneider Farris (Writers Club Press (2002) ISBN 059524940X
• Hawking God. A Young Jewish Woman's Ordeal in Jews for Jesus by Ellen Kamentsky (Sapphire Press) An excerpt

External links

• Jews for Jesus Official website
• Ex-Jews for Jesus website of former members of Jews for Jesus
• Jews for Judaism Jews for Judaism website, an answer to Jews for Jesus
• Jews for Jesus: Targeting Jews for Conversion with Subterfuge and Deception - the view of the Anti-Defamation League
• Why Jews Don't Believe In Jesus
• Who is financing "Jews for Jesus"? (faqs.org)
• Complaint in lawsuit against Google over Blogspot subdomain Template:PDFlink
• Why don't Jews accept Jesus as the Messiah? by Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner (about.com)
• County Jewish organizations protest evangelical attempt by Steven Reiskind (Boca Raton News) November 5, 2003
• Jews for Jesus campaign targets NY Jews by Gal Beckerman (July 10, 2006) Jerusalem Post
• Holy Hell Over Subway 'jesus' Ad Blitz Targets Jews By Jeremy Olshan (New York Post) July 7, 2006