By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
In the largest, most strategic campaign to date in its 30-year history, the Jews for Jesus, made a two-week, whirlwind tour through the Puget Sound, leaving pamphlets, tracts and targeted home mailings in its wake. This not-for-profit organization, dedicated to preaching Christianity to Jews proclaiming that Jesus was and is the Jewish Messiah, blew through the region in late August.
Their new campaign, “Operation Behold Your God,” began in 2001 and targets Jews in 65 cities nationwide with Jewish populations of over 25,000. The missionary-style group, headquartered in San Francisco, dedicates itself to evangelizing and proselytizing to as many Jews as possible. It is its hope that Jews will accept Jesus as the foretold Messiah and thereby becoming what they call a Hebrew-Christian, or a believer.
“This is the first time we’ve had a campaign in Seattle,” said Aaron Abramson, one of 15 outreach mission representatives that flew into Seattle for the campaign. “Seattle just happened to be on the map. Obviously, there is a growing Jewish community here. We’ve gotten into a phase where we’re trying to go into a lot of communities where we haven’t made an effort. We’re going into cities to raise the image of the messiahship of Jesus. That’s our goal.”
The Jews for Jesus Web site describes the campaign as one that “might just be the largest Jewish evangelistic effort since those 1st [sic] century Jews for Jesus proclaimed the good news.”
Both volunteers and paid staff working for the organization blanketed downtown Seattle’s Westlake Mall and the Pike Place Market in an effort to spread their message locally. Seventy percent of the group’s funding is from private donors, and Amer Olson says this campaign is funded through private and congregational sources.
“We’re here because there are people out there that really want to see this happen,” said Olson, another outreach mission representative who lives in New York. “We will be at many other events in the city in the time we’re here. We’re handing out literature and speaking to people, giving them a glimpse and a brief introduction. We want to be available to share what we believe is a life-changing message.”
In addition to street evangelism, Jews for Jesus placed a large advertisement in the Mercer Island Reporter inviting the public to attend one of two events scheduled by the group – a screening at the Seattle Art Museum of Survivor Stories, a documentary produced by Jews for Jesus which features Jewish Holocaust survivors telling their personal stories about how they came to accept Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. More than 100 people attended the event.
“This is one of the more shameful things they’ve done,” said Ethan J. Felson, assistant executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs in New York. The JCPA is concerned that Christian missionaries are becoming increasingly aggressive. “Seniors are a community of more isolated people. To take somebody who has gone through the Holocaust and target them at this stage of their lives is deeply offensive.”
Arguing that the Holocaust touched many different people’s lives, Abramson doesn’t think the charge of targeting seniors is fair.
“These are Jews that came to be believers in different ways,” said Abramson. “There are varieties of people who suffered under those circumstances. And we’re advertising everywhere. We’re not going to old people’s homes and saying ‘Hey, come to the movie’. It could attract anybody.”
Felson disagreed. In a display of protest to this current campaign, Felson circulated a copy of the Resolution on Misleading and Aggressive Proselytization — which was adopted by the JCPA board in June 2002 — to Jewish community leaders in cities scheduled for campaign stops on the Jews for Jesus itinerary.
The document is a joint resolution between the leadership of Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist and Reform denominations in the U.S. Included in the document is the unequivocal statement that “condemns the use of Jewish symbols and practices as deceptive and inappropriate in the marketing of Christian groups as legitimate forms of Judaism.”
“For instance, their use of ‘Y’shua’ is designed, in part, to disguise their actual devotion to Jesus,” said Felson. “They have two main messages: the first is that Jews should come to love ‘Y’shua’ and the second is that you can remain Jewish. They would like to see themselves as a fifth movement within Judaism. We [Jews] don’t agree on much, but we’re together on this!”
Jews for Jesus’s Abramson also rejects this characterization of the group.
“No,” countered Abramson. “We’re interdenominational. I wouldn’t say that that’s the overall arching consensus on our staff. I’ve never seen anywhere that that’s our position. We look at Judaism as an array of ideas in itself. Judaism is not part of Judaism according to all those denominations.”
Olson doesn’t necessarily see the need for acceptance or inclusion.
“As far as most of us that work in Jews For Jesus,” said Olson, “we don’t feel in the least that we’re no longer Jewish.”
“We’ve come to understand and we know that we’re not going to win favor in the Jewish community, and we’re prepared for that. If the Jewish community suddenly turned and accepted us, the question would still remain, ‘Is Jesus still the Messiah?’ If they asked us to stop proselytizing we would say no.”
The JCPA board, however, said it will not sit idly by. In its resolution, it recommends various defensive tactics that Jewish communities can adopt to combat the efforts of these missionary groups, such as monitoring their work, educating community leaders, screening out potential group members with conversion as their agenda, and asking local telephone directories to stop listing Hebrew-Christian organizations under the category of synagogues.
“If you take a look at Christian theology,” said Felson, “it has to do with saving a soul and scoring one for the team. I would implore them to play their cards honorably and honestly. What they are asking people to do is to leave the Jewish faith and enter the Christian faith.”
Operation Behold Your God is scheduled to end in 2005.