This group is currently conducting a major advertising campaign.
My question is; do these people genuinely believe what they present - that they are promoting a better and enhanced version of Judaism, or are they simply out to turn Jews into Christians, and see Jews for J as a step in the right direction.
I have read that they are financed primarily by evangelical Christian groups, which, in turn, makes people suspicious that they are merely a front group. Perhaps some people here are more familiar with them and their ideology and can shed some light on the subject.
Moderator: I’m unsure if this belongs in GD or GQ. Your call.
It depends on who you ask. The person you meet out on the street handing out leaflets probably does believe what s/he’s been told. The higher-ups, however, know the truth.
You are correct, however, that this particular group is financed by Christian evangelical groups, primarily Baptist ones. Their founder “Moshe” Rosen is an ordained Baptist minister.
While they may present themselves as an alternative form of Judaism, the ultimate goal is to cause Jews to become full fledged Christians.
My personal feeling on this (yeah, I know no one asked for it) is that if you want to go out and preach Christianity and the Gospel, fine, go out and do it. But don’t try to sell it as Judaism.
Hey! Don’t knock Scientology… * Battlefield Earth * was a masterpiece :rolleyes:
I actually saw the movie for free…best MST3K movie to come out in years; wish they were still doing it…
As for Jews-for-Jesus, the whole premise sounds kinda silly to me. What exactly is the supposed difference between a “Jew-for-Jesus” and a converted Jew?
However, they know that many unaffiliated Jews will not formally convert. They therefore try to do an end-run and claim that you can still be Jewish and believe in Jesus as the Messiah.
After all, if Jesus fulfilled the law (which goes part-and-parcel with their theology) why perform any Jewish rituals?
You may, however, see some of them (leafleters)wearing yalmulkas or tzitzis. This, however, is only a deception. I highly doubt these same people wear them in private.
"Messianic Jews believe that there is nothing irreconcilable between Judaism (i.e., following the law as set out in the Talmud and the Torah) and believing that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. (For those of you limbering up your fingers for a long post on how over-simplistic this is: yes, I know.) They believe that nothing in the New Testament supercedes the directives to follow the law in the Old Testament, and that both books should be adhered to. But “Messianic Jews” describes a belief system while “Jews For Jesus” is an organized group, and a group with a far different agenda.
We’ve discussed this before and I believe the consensus was that it is possible to be a Jew for Jesus (meaning, believe Jesus was the Messiah), and even possible to be a converted Jew for Jesus. By the same token, it is possible to be a “Messianic Jew,” i.e., a Christian (all of them I know were raised as Christians, not as Jews), who determines to keep the laws of the Old Testament as well.
“Jews for Jesus,” however, is not concerned with pursuading Christian people to follow Jewish law; they are concerned with converting Jews to Christianity. To the extend that they try to sugar-coat and disguise that home-truth (and they do), I think it’s appropriate to view them with suspicion.
Izzy, at its core, Jews for J is a scheme by Christian Missionaries to convert irreligious and ignorant Jews who remain culturally attached to the word “Judaism” due to memories of their grandmother’s matzo balls on Passover. It’s run by the Christian organization, the American Board of Missions to the Jews.
Over the years, they’ve had quite a measure of success and no doubt many people who now identify with the group are converted true-believers. However, that’s not true of the movement’s founders and higher-ups.
Good information on them can be found in the book “Jews for Nothing” by Dov Aharoni Fisch, and while that book is out of print, there are plenty of internet resources for finding out-of-print books.
And you’re right that they’ve recently stepped up their conversion campaign. I’m led to believe that the reason for this is the millennium…big Christian thing.
In theory, Jews for Jesus is not all that ridiculous. You can make an argument that what the J’s for J are doing is rejecting the teachings of Paul. The greatest theological debate of the early Christian church was whether Jewish law should still be applied - a huge sticking point was circumcision for Gentile converts. This issue is being debated in another thread in this forum.
ACtually this group has been in my hometown a lot and they come onto my college campus a lot, too.
They want to convert you to full-fledged Christians. My Rabbi at home constantly gives sermons on this topic because the Jew For Jesus group has snagged quite a few members of our congregation. They hand out little pamphlets about how Jesus is the right way to go and how he is a Jew, too. So, why don’t we follow him?
oops! pressed send too early.
They are very mucha reality and a scary one at that. These are the people who firmly believe that Jesus will not return until everyone is converted.
As the first of your quotes is mine, I’d like to ask you to clarify what issue you have with it.
Presumably the evangelical Christian groups who fund Jews for J, if they indeed do (and other posters seem to confirm this) are not out to promote Judaism. It would seem logical then to infer that the group that they are funding is also not attempting to promote a form of Judaism.
Of course, this proves nothing. But it is suggestive nonetheless. Sort of like finding out that a scientific body making some sort of pronouncement is funded by some business group - makes you wonder.
Most of the other quotes are along the same lines.
I don’t see why you used the word “or”. They believe that they are promoting a better and enhanced version of Judaism, and they are simply out to turn Jews into Christians, and see Jews for J as a step in the right direction. To these people, Christianity is a better and more enhanced version of Judaism.
Because they consistently leave all mention of Christianity out of their advertising, which emphasizes heavily the Jewishness of accepting Jesus as the saviour.
