EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
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Jesus Not Our Messiah
etting you to respond when they approach is the key
to their strategy. They call it conversing to engage
you in the gospel. I call it converting, or at least try-
ing to. Deception is their hallmark. Targets include
Jews who are unaffiliated, young, spiritually restless or new
immigrants — people the organized Jewish community has in
some ways failed.
So be on guard Sept. 3-24.
Evangelic missionaries from Jews for Jesus are coming to
Detroit and Ann Arbor. Don't underestimate the power of
their pitch. Engaging you in conversation before you realize
who they are is their intent. They blur dis-
tinctions between Judaism and Christianity.
By the end of 2006, they seek to target 65
diaspora communities with Jewish popula-
tions of 25,000 or more. They want Jews to
accept Jesus, whose teachings spurred
Christianity, as the "Messiah of Israel." It
matters not that the pairing is irreconcilable.
The organization pegs the level of believers
ROBERT A. at 30,000 to 125,000. More significant than
the exact number is
SKLAR
an annual budget of
Editor
$15 million and an
adeptness at mass-
marketing Christianity wrapped in a
Jewish cloak. Jews for Jesus has com-
mitted $22 million to Behold Your
God, a five-year campaign to bring
Jews into the fold, according to
Baltimore-based Jews for Judaism.
Jews for Jesus is one of 900 North
American missionary groups. It boasts
that it is "100 percent Jewish and 100 Rabbi Pachter
Christian." That contradiction alone
is cause for alarm.
Disciples of the San Francisco-based movement say they are
"Messianic" Jews, typically Jewish-born Christians who
believe Jesus fulfilled Hebrew prophesies of the Messiah.
Oakland and Washtenaw counties each have "Messianic" con-
gregants. Believers may wear kippot, embrace Jewish ritual
and use Hebrew terms to appear authentic.
Rubbing Shoulders
The High Holidays in southeast Michigan will compete with
confrontation-minded Jews for Jesus believers eyeing Jewish
young professionals unconnected Jewishly, Russian immi-
grants, and Jewish high school and college students returning
from summer break.
But Behold Your God Detroit won't just target Detroit's
96,000 Jews, Ann Arbor's 7,000 Jews and the University of
Michigan's 6,000 Jewish students. It also will appeal to metro
Detroit's 125,000 people with Arab ancestry. "We will have a
one-of-a-kind opportunity," espouses the Jews for Jesus Web
site, "to reach out to two groups that are traditionally hostile
to the gospel."
Street and campus evangelism, staples of Jews for Jesus, is
one thing. Doing it on the holiest of the Jewish holidays is the
ultimate in chutzpah. Behold Your God Detroit leaders vow
to use mailings, public showings of evangelistic videos and
holiday services to let Jews "really encounter their Messiah."
- Campaign leader Shaun Buchhalter, a Brooklyn-born
believer, boasts on the Internet that when you "preach the
gospel loud enough for Jewish people to hear, lots of other
people hear the good news, too." He promises to proclaim the
gospel so that the Jewish, Arab and other communities will
come to know Jesus. "Imagine," he says, "Jews and Arabs for
Jesus!"
I experienced a few dozen Behold Your God South Florida
believers last December. Expect more here.
Locally, Jews and Christians have teamed up for the greater
good in groups like the Ecumenical Institute for Jewish-
Christian Studies and the National Conference for
Community and Justice. Jews and Christians prayed together
after 9-11. They mark Holocaust Remembrance and Martyrs
Day together. They share a hope for Middle East peace and
Israel's right to exist with safe and secure borders, notwith-
standing the Presbyterian Church vote urging divestment in
companies that do business with Israel.
Many synagogues have forged bonds of friendship with
churches. I've seen no local groundswell to unite the faiths.
Stay Focused
Jesus may have been an itinerant Jewish preacher, but the reli-
gion he inspired is not rooted in Judaism. Rabbi Eliot Pachter,
president of the Michigan Board of Rabbis, underscores that.
"Jews for Jesus and similar Christian missionary groups vio-
late the relationship in both their message and method," said
Rabbi Pachter, of Congregation B'nai Moshe in West
Bloomfield. Jews for Jesus is a disin-
genuous term, he said, "because, by
definition, an individual who accepts
Jesus as the Messiah is a Christian."
What these missionaries seek is to
perpetrate a fraud on vulnerable Jews.
They also seek to twist our coun-
teroffensives. That's important to
know. The Jewish Community
Council of Metropolitan Detroit, in
cooperation with the Jewish federa-
tions of metropolitan Detroit and
Washtenaw County, has formed an
Susan Perlman
alliance of Jewish leaders and interfaith
partners to counter Behold Your God
Detroit.
But the co-leader of Behold Your God South Florida, Stan
Meyer, found a positive in Federation rumblings there. Why?"
he said in a letter to residents there. "Because it tells us there
are Jewish people in Palm Beach County wondering if Jesus is
the Messiah of Israel. Why else would the Jewish federation
feel so threatened?"
Clearly, some Jews are so unconnected they come around to
believing what Jews for Jesus founder Moishe Rosen of
Denver first felt 32 years ago — that "Jewishness and Jesus go
hand in hand."
Co-founder Susan Perlman, a Brooklyn-born Jew and social
activist, fuels the "Who is a Jew?"debate as she tells of finding
Jesus "in the Scriptures" after rebelling against God.
'And the more I read, the more I recognized the necessary
avenue for me to have a relationship with God. I must come
to him through Jesus, the Jewish carpenter, the Messiah, the
Son of God," she wrote in a Jews for Jesus essay.
Judaism predates Jesus by 2,000 years. The Jewish bedrock
is belief in God, who gave the Divinely inspired laws of Torah
to Moses for the Jewish people. The Jewish communities of
Detroit and Ann Arbor can best repel the proselytizing of
Behold Your God by rejecting its pitches of "enlightened dia-
logue."
With one voice, we also must expose the delusional claim
that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah of Israel. ❑
271 WEST MAPLE
DOWNTOWN BIRMINGHAM
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8/27
2004
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