Bring 'em on!

The Jews who are susceptible to the approaches of the Jews for Jesus movement, are spiritually the weakest members of our community. I do not hate them, and I am not angry at them. The fact that they allow themselves to be turned should cause the rest of us to ask some questions about ourselves.

How could we allow that to happen? Where did we go wrong, that that person felt so alone that he had to turn to those people for friendship?

We tend to be a very exclusive little group of people - exclusive, and exclusivist. Our standards are very high - we tell ourselves - G-d never said that we would be the largest nation - we tell each other - and in spite of all the rules against loshen hora, we have an awful lot to say about Jews who do not measure up ...

I don't want to go back to that kosher chicken story, I've said my say on that one, but the relative cost of kosher food generally is but one of a myriad of issues which demonstrate - my rabbi has said this and we would all agree, I'm sure - that it is not easy to be a Jew!

Nor should it be - we have a mission, and we need to have certain qualities - qualities which one inculcates in one's personal life, not qualities which one is born with - in order to accomplish that mission. But don't look down on a Jew who isn't quite where he/she ought to be! How many of those Jews don't turn elsewhere for solace?

We talk about kiruv, and much wonderful work is done in that regard, but I think that frequently in our hearts we are not warm to the individuals who most desperately need to be drawn back into our spiritual home.

Some years ago I was walking home from shul after our Friday night service, and I fell in with an elderly gentleman who had recently started attending our shul. I generally try to find someone like that to walk with because I am concerned about these old folk walking alone - there have been unfortunate incidents. This fellow was clearly, at the very least, eccentric (I subsequently discovered that he is actually under curatorship for not being able to manage his own affairs) and he rambled on on all sorts of subjects as we walked.

Eventually he got round to the subject of shuls. I asked him where he had attended shul before, and he said Chabad, "But I don't go there anymore"
"Why not?" I asked
"Because Chabad is for fahtsurishde menschen" he said

I had never heard the word "fahtsurishd" before, but the meaning was clear, and the word is beautiful (now I use it whenever I can!)

But, oy, what do you do about that comment? OK, so the gentleman concerned is only half responsible for what he said (now, there's a fahtsurishde mensch!) - but still, Chabad does some of the most amazing kiruv work. I felt personally offended, even taking into account the source of the comment, because I would say that I spend a good percentage of my time in the local Chabad shul. I love the people, I could go on for pages about the rabbis, one of whom I have always regarded as the most spiritually powerful person I have ever had the privilege to meet.

Fahtsurishd? Are you serious?

Where did he get that idea? I would say that it's not an original thought on his part. He got that from somewhere. How many of us, instead of being non-judgemental, look down on a Jew who fails to do what he should do in a any given situation ("He dropped the meat fork into the milk sink - I won't eat there again!"; "There's no eruv in Cape Town - how can they live like that?"; etc, etc). We don't help that person- we wait for him/her to come to us. And if they don't, well, so long sweetheart, its over!

It's just not good enough on our part. It is not just his/her misfortune when a Jew walks away - it is our misfortune, our failure too.

The fact that the work which the Jews for Jesus people do is despicable work, that my blood boils when I see them and I am tempted to do really bad things to them - that's another issue altogether. I will never allow myself to fall into the trap of acting out that rage, because, as we know, that is exactly what they want. There is a whole Christian industry devoted entirely to the conversion of the Jews.

I have a Christian partner in my firm who is a senior member of his church (a church which gets 2,000 people to each one of the three services which it has to hold on a Sunday morning because it cannot accomodate all those who wish to attend at one sitting - halevai we should have such problems, waiting for men to arrive so that we have a minyan!). He tells me that he sees it as his personal mission - that he has been taught this - his personal mission to "bring light to the Jews". It made my blood go cold to hear this, and I have been practising law side-by-side with this man for 20 years!

We think we are warm people, but the truth is, we are not nearly warm enough. Its good to feel that you are part of an exclusive group - but not when you are on the fringe, or outside that little circle. Not everybody can take the cold.

Lion613

Darren; You have quoted a very good passage, but I think the "hole in the wall" is not the behaviour of the Jew, but the environment in which he lives.
As long as the Jew remains in exile, no matter how observant, eventually assimilation, and missionaries will thrive, more so when the exile is a "comfortable" one.(e.g. S.africa and America)
Orthodox groups can do as much Kiruv as they can, but the fact is that the exile is a blemish and a curse on the Jewish people,and eventually will continue to breed missionaries and assimilation.
Plug the hole by coming Home.

When you go into a new shul on yontif, someone is going to come up to you and say, "you're in my seat!" When you got to a new church on their festivals they greet you warmly, hug you and don't care where you sit. When I first start going to various shuls the names on the seats freaked me out. It seemed so foreign and unwelcoming! We can' underestimate the power of what Darren describes and J4J actively does this with the vulnerable in our society e.g. lonely older people or teenages discovering themselves. We are not at all warm. If anything we're suspicious of new people.

They use many forms of deception, only some of which includes distorting our scriptures to meet their ends. They mimic and bend our practices to make their stuff simpler for us to accept e.g. kippot, services on a Friday, calling JC Jewish friendly names like Yeshua and Moshiach and they have Rabbis and synagogues... if anything they've incorporated rabbinic and Oral law into their Christian practices just to deceive us. Watch out!

Watch out for my next blog. I'm on an (anti-)mission! I come from a very assimilated past and felt cheated when I discovered what I had lost. It is a big passion for me now to help other Jews not be so misled. I don't do that out of rage, I do it because I think it is important. It might be a while because I'm travelling extensively until Pesach, but it's coming!

Lion613, I'm glad you're okay with Chabad. I don't know what I'd do otherwise...

To Darenhaus; I know that there are missionaries in E.Y., but let me remind you that Jews in Israel are like patients on the road to recovery, while those in exile are in "terminal" wards.
Within one generation Israel will be a belief based country with Torah laws (one just has to look at the birth rate of the Hareidi famalies). All types of missionary work will be a severe crime (Baruch Hashem)
Not so in a foreign country.

To Darrenhaus; Right now I "live" in Israel, and "sleeping" in S. Africa.
What else do you want to know about my personal life? My Israel I.D. no.