Foes Fear Church Will Attempt to Convert Jews : Planned Mormon Center in Israel Hit

Ultra-orthodox Jews are trying to stop Brigham Young University from building a center that they charge will house Mormon missionaries dedicated to converting Jews.

The tiny group Yad Lachim (“Hand to the Brothers”) took its case to the Israeli parliament this week. Yad Lachim asked the Interior Committee to halt work at the Mt. Scopus site of BYU’s Center for Near East Studies. (BYU in Utah is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church.)

The committee declined to stop the building, but asked BYU officials to testify next month on their project.

David Galbraith, director of the Near East Center, said he has received no formal invitation yet, but welcomed the opportunity to address the committee.

“I’m quite anxious to speak to them and see if I can allay some of their fears,” Galbraith said. “We’ve been here 17 years, and there’s not been a single incident of missionary work.”

Opposed to Conversion of Jews

Prof. Moshe Dann, a spokesman for Yad Lachim, said the group fights missionary and cult activity of any kind in Israel. “After the Holocaust, the 6 million lost, after our history of decimation, it is a serious thing” to lose a Jew through conversion to another religion, he said.

The group has battled against the rebuilding of a Baptist Church in Jerusalem that was destroyed by fire believed to have been arson in October, 1982. It keeps tabs on the activities of the Church of Scientology and Transcendental Meditationists, according to Dann.

Five years ago, the ultra-orthodox Jews succeeded in having a law passed that forbids the giving of gifts to encourage people to convert to another religion. No one has ever been prosecuted for violating this law.

Yad Lachim’s cause celebre now, however, is its campaign to halt construction of a multimillion-dollar branch of BYU in east Jerusalem. The center is being built on the slopes of Mt. Scopus, just below Hebrew University and across from the Mount of Olives, a site holy to Christians and Jews.

Dann says his group believes the Mormons have kept a low profile while waiting to establish a permanent center in Israel. The parliament committee’s decision is a victory for his group, he says.

Mayor Supports Project

A spokesman for Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek’s office says, however, that there is “no chance at all” that the project will be stopped.

Kollek enthusiastically supports the project. He has lent his clout to cutting through red tape and winning approval for BYU to lease more than six acres of choice land with a panoramic view of the Old City.

Yad Lachim has accused Kollek of “selling out” to the Mormons after the church donated $1 million to the city’s Jerusalem Fund. The money was used to build a park on the Mount of Olives that was named after Orson Hayde, a Mormon elder who came to Jerusalem in the 19th Century.

The Mormons, Kollek’s office maintains, have promised not to proselytize Jews. Elders of the church have traveled to Israel to assure officials here that they want only to build a permanent center where BYU students will live and study for a semester or a year.

Yad Lachim’s ‘Mole’

Yad Lachim has said it has “a mole” within the Mormon community here who has provided it with documents that they say “prove” that the Mormons are determined to convert Jews both in Israel and the United States.

Yad Lachim provided reporters with copies of the “Missionary Training Manual for Use in the Jewish Proselyting Program.” The document, published by the Mormon Church, provides young Mormon missionaries with guidelines on the best way to approach Jews.

A church official in Utah confirmed that the manual was published by the church, but he said the church no longer uses it. The manual was not used in Israel, he said.